CAMPING OUT 

WARREN H. MILLER 





Class 

Book 

Cop)Tight}]°_ 



COPnUCHT DEPOSIT. 




THE EXPLORER'S WALL TENT, 

PUT UP WITH SHEARS AND RIDGE POLE 



CAMPING OUT 



BY 

WARREN H. MILLER 

Editor of Field and Stream 

Author of "Rifles and SHOTorrNs," "The Boys' Book of 

Hunting and Fishing," "The Boys' Book op 

Canoeing and 'Sailing," etc. 




ILLUSTRATED 



NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



^^^ 



COPYRIGHT, 1918, 
BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



-4 1913 



COPYRIGHT, 1917-18. 
BY THE FIELD AND STREAM PUB. CO. 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 

©Ci.A-i97159 
^■10 I 



PREFACE 

Camping out may well be classed as one of the 
liberal arts, so wide is its application. Once the 
bulwarks of civilisation are removed, veteran and 
tyro alike come under the same skies, and must 
conform to the same principles governing life in 
the open. Whether one hits the far trail, by canoe, 
pack train or back pack, or whether one camps 
within easy distance of team transportation, the 
same actualities of weather, insect life, camp cook- 
ery, and shelter confront one, and their successful 
solution must be achieved to make the camp an 
enjoyable memory. Virtually the only difference 
is in the limitations of weight imposed on the 
nomadic camper who travels in the wilderness, 
which limitations are by no means as exacting 
when the camp is permanently located for the 
proposed stay. Hence a book on modem camping 
out would have to contain chapters adapted to 
both kinds of camping, since the equipment used 
would vary greatly, while the general system 
would remain the same. 

While perfection of detail and organisation in 
the travelling camp is an essential, it makes no 
less for convenience and saving of time in the per- 
manent one, so one may as well learn how the vet- 



vi PREFACE 

eran does it from the start, for no experienced 
man will tolerate hardships and discomforts as 
part of the accepted regime of his camping out. 
He needs his strength for the toil of the trail and 
so requires a restful camp quite as much as does 
the man who merely wants to loaf in the woods 
and do it at a minimum of discomfort. 

Perhaps the author's experience of thirty years 
of camping out in all climes and conditions, going 
once a month throughout every month of the year, 
and often once a week in the fall and spring 
months, will enable him to produce a useful vol- 
ume on the subject. The reader will find that 
this book covers a wide range, from the de luxe 
camping of the man who can afford a fine outfit 
and goes to the woods for rest and recreation, to 
the explorer's and hunter's camping, where get- 
ting into big game country or little-travelled lands 
far from the nearest railroad involves the utmost 
of comfort on the minimum of weight. Between 
the two lie many variations, such as the canoeist's 
trip, the lone hike, the automobilist's trek, the 
winter cruise by snow shoe and toboggan, the late 
fall camp where the tent stove becomes a feature, 
and the beach camp where sand and wind offer a 
new set of conditions requiring special solutions. 

While the general scheme of modem camping 
is the same throughout, the reader will find that 
each kind of outdoor life offers its own special 
features, and, as nearly all of them will be tried 
by the enthusiast at one period or another in his 



PREFACE vii 

development as a master camper, reading up on 
the subject before getting into the practice of it 
will well repay. It is the author's hope that a 
camp for every kind of trip has been well covered 
within the limits of this volume. The permanent 
log shack has purposely been omitted, for the 
reason that, as a rule, new scenery, new adven- 
tures at each succeeding season appeal more to 
the outdoorsman than a return each year to the 
same spot, every foot of which locality becomes 
all too soon too well known to excite further 
interest. 

Wabken H. Millee. 

Inteelakbit, N. J., 1918. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTBB PA«SH 

I Packing Your Outfit 17 

II With Knapsack and Rifle 41 

III A Lone Hike for Bass 65 

IV Canoe Voyageuring 80 

V We Discover the Adirondacks .... 104 

VI Camping out De Luxe 131 

VII Horseback Camping 151 

VIII Wilderness Guide Posts 172 

IX A Go-Light Beach Hike 191 

X Camp Cooking 202 

XI Omar, the Tent Maker 224 

XII The Esquimaux Tent 241 

XIII Mainly About Tent Stoves 263 

XIV Automobile Camping 286 

' XV Winter Camping 300 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

The explorer's wall tent Frontispiece 



PAGE 



The Tump line— the Red Man's carry-all ... 18 

The Squaw Hitch 18 

The "Perfect" Pack 34 

Carrjing harness and duffle bags 34 

Tump strap and tarp pack 34 

The siwash pack 34 

Tump strap and cam-ing harness SO 

Hitting the trail with a 30-pound pack . . . ^ . 50 

Tarpauhn A-tent with cheesecloth ends .... 60 

The " perfect " shelter tent 66 

Packsack-sleeping bag, made up as a bag ... 66 

The stretcher bed tent with mosquito bar canopy . 74 
The stretcher bed tent showing stretcher bed and 

pole frame 74 

The rest stick 82 

Shouldering the Peterborough wooden canoe . . 82 

Carrying the canoe on paddle blades 98 

At the end of the portage 98 

The tent cot and ''handy" tenl . ' 106 

Canoe and duffle in one cany 106 

The end of the carr>' 114 

Negotiating a log-jam on Ampersand Brook . . 122 



XI 



xii ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAOB 

Hauling over a beaver dam 128 

A Dan Beard tent and folding camp furniture . . 146 

The morning wash 146 

Horseback camping 154 

Morning in camp under the pines 154 

Telling time by the compass 162 

Joan grazing the horses near camp 162 

Blazed stake 178 

Lob-Tree 178 

Cache or trap blaze 178 

Corner blaze at turn of trail 178 

The Appalachian tent as a packsack 194 

Setting it up as a tent 194 

Pail and stopple cook kit 208 

A nesting aluminum camp kitchen 208 

The forester cook kit 208 

Tepee, shanty tent, forester, and miner's tent . . 226 

The forester tent with packsack-sleeping bag . . 234 

The Esquimau tent with tent stove in tepee end . 250 

Side view of the Esquimau tent 250 

Tent stove and reflector baker 274 

The author's tent stove in mouth of blizzard tent . 274 

Camping with an automobile trailer 290 

In camp in the Rockies 306 

The forester tent in heavy snow . . . . . . 306 



CAMPING OUT 



CAMPING OUT 

CHAPTER I 

PACKING YOUR OUTFIT 

Like the birch-bark canoe, portages and packs 
have been with the native Red American since 
long before the white man came. Curiously, the 
original Iroquois pack, with its wooden frame, is 
the type which represents the survival of the 
fittest, for the latest pack of the present moment 
is of this type, after years of trial with pack 
baskets, harness, packsacks, and rucksacks, all of 
them white man's inventions. The Indian had 
just two carrying devices, the tump strap and its 
thongs, and the carrying frame. These two seem 
to have been universally distributed all over the 
country. With modifications, you will find them 
from the Micmacs of the extreme Northeast to th-e 
Papagos of the Southwest, the tump strap being 
made of every conceivable natural material from 
rawhide to woven basswood fibre, and the frame 
. 17 



18 CAMPING OUT 

varying in the same way, according to the material 
available in the region in which the particular 
tribe lived. With the Iroquois it was made en- 
tirely out of mocker nut hickory, including the 
tump line, not a stitch of animal matter appearing 
in the makeup; with the Pima and Papago the 
frame is a mere natural fork of mesquite, spread- 
ing a deep net of yucca fibre. With all of them 
the two main natural principles of big weight 
portable by the strong neck muscles, and a frame 
holding the load off the small of the back and 
transferring its thrust to the brisket muscles, are 
the guiding motives in the design. 

For, while a load with shoulder harness is very 
limited — say, 60 pounds as a maximum — the 
amount that can be carried with the tump line and 
frame runs up into the hundreds of pounds. The 
reason why shoulder harness has such a low limit 
is not the fatigue nor the disposition of the load 
on the shoulder blades, but the mere fact that con- 
striction of the big arteries of the arms is pro- 
duced by the pressure of the straps passing up 
from under the armpits over the breast muscles. 
Any one who has carried a packsack much will 
recall that the first warning that the pack is too 
heavy is a numb and prickly feeling extending over 
the entire arm. If not relieved, the arm steadily 



?kJ^ 


^ 


k*'- 
/i ^ 

:^--- 
t 


^.1 





THE TUMP LINE THE RED MAN's CARRY-ALL 




THE SQUAW HITCH 



PACKING YOUR OUTFIT 19 

gets worse and you have the same sensations of 
''foot asleep" as when that member is unduly 
sat upon. At what weight this takes place depends 
on the pack, the tightness and width of the straps, 
and the weight carried, but a limit of about 60 
pounds is the general maximum. Personally, I 
limit my pack to 35 pounds, with maybe 40 for 
a start-off; but, for real comfort, you want 27 to 
30 pounds, and that you can carry all day without 
discomfort. Wherefore, if you are on a light hik- 
ing trip with rod or rifle, a trek across gamey 
country on foot, take a packsack and study light- 
ness to the last ounce. There is no trouble in 
having all the comfort you want, only you must 
give it thought and get the right equipment for 
such a trip. 

There is no gainsaying the fact that, to the man 
unaccustomed to the tump line, the strain on the 
neck muscles which have never carried any such 
weight is very annoying and painful for a few 
days. Also, as one instinctively grasps the strap 
thongs up near his ears, to steady and ease the 
load, one has no freedom at all; in fact, thump- 
line work is mere carrying, to be got over as soon 
as possible and nothing else is done or thought of 
when it is going on. With the packsack, on the 
contrary, the sooner its existence is forgotten the 



20 CAMPING OUT 

better; quit fighting your pack and put your at- 
tention on the scenery, game chances, objects of 
interest along the route, and let the fact that you 
are carrying your outfit with you on your back 
become a side-line in your attention. This is easily 
done with a light pack of around 30 pounds ; with 
a heavy one it is not so easily ignored, whence, 
again, study lightness. 

But where the tump line excels is on the canoe 
portage. Here you have a good canoe bottom to 
carry all you possess, for hundreds of miles may- 
be, and extreme lightness is not necessary unless 
there are only two of you, when again it becomes 
advisable in that each can carry his load in a pack- 
sack and each also take an end of the canoe, thus 
doing the whole portage in one lap. With a crowd 
on a canoe trip, at least half of them will be 
loaded up with a quantity of stuff that they are 
personally sure they cannot do without. Usually 
these are the wealthy members of the party, who 
have always hired guides to do their hard work, 
and their load is usually double that carried by 
the seasoned canoeists. What's to be done? If 
we make the portage in two trips, that will mean 
ten miles of walking if the portage is three miles 
long, and a whole day lost in doing what ought 
to be but a few hour's job. The only answer is 



PACKING YOUR OUTFIT 21 

the tump line. Load up the wealthy with their 
own plunder, put a tump line across each one's 
forehead, and take the residue of their stuff your- 
self, in addition to your own outfit. It's the only 
way to make progress ! 

Again the tump line looms up as the only prac- 
tical thing when you are out for a cruise in the 
wilderness that will last a month or two, and sev- 
eral hundred pounds of food must be considered, 
besides a lot of things that might be gone without 
in a short trip. There is no getting away from this 
weight ; it stares you in the face at the first por- 
tage — ^whence the tump strap, and, to ease its 
privations, the frame carrier. 

The commonest way to use the tump line is with 
tent cloth or ground cloth spread out flat and the 
tump thongs laid lengthwise of it, about the right 
distance apart to come a foot longer than the 
width of your bundle. All the surplus cloth is 
folded in over the thongs, and then one's posses- 
sions are piled on the folded-in cloth, soft articles 
like blankets and clothing on the under side that 
is to come next your back. The bulk of these goods, 
pressing down on the folded-in flaps of your tarp^ 
will keep them from pulling out again, and you 
now roll up the tarp over the pile of duffle, folding 
it and then puckering the ends by drawing tight 



22 CAMPING OUT 

the tump thongs. After adjusting these so that 
the tump strap has just enough thong to let the 
pack come down a little below your shoulder 
blades, you tie each thong on its own standing 
part and take the ends and pass them around the 
pack both ways, precisely like tying a bundle. The 
tump strap is 18 inches long by 2i/2 inches wide, 
and the thongs are each 8 feet long, of %-inch 
rawhide. The Indians cut or weave the strap in 
one piece with the thongs, and learn by experience 
just how much thong to leave to have the pack 
hang right, but a white man's improvement has 
been to have each end of the tump strap with a 
buckle and the ends of the thong straps pass 
through these buckles, so as to be adjustable — an 
improvement worth while, for even a single strap- 
hole may mean the difference between discomfort 
and tolerable carrying. Such a pack will carry 
without punishment after the neck muscles are ac- 
customed to it, and a load of 40 to 50 pounds is 
plenty for a beginner to start on. Later the pack 
itself can weigh 60 pounds, and on top of it will 
be piled duffle bags, flour sacks and what not, 
bringing the weight up to maybe 120 pounds, which 
is all any man not inured to the work should allow 
himself. No artery or vein is now under pressure 
and the whole load can be thrown off with a twist 



PACKING YOUR OUTFIT 23 

of the neck, a most important feature in going 
over rough, mountainous trails or fording a bad, 
slippery stream. 

As stated before, you will find that your hands 
instinctively reach for the thongs on each side of 
your neck, to ease the pack and steady it on your 
shoulders. Further, with either packsack or tump 
pack, a great relief will come when you double 
your fists over your back under the bottom of the 
pack, thus tilting it forward. Just why this is so 
is not apparent under the laws of mechanics, since 
pushing out the rear end of the pack simply moves 
the centre of gravity that much further away from 
the point of support ; but, nevertheless, it is a fact 
of most practical application. I usually perform 
this tilting function with my coat doubled up 
through my belt, thus leaving my hands free; 
otherwise they will be constantly creeping back 
there to help ease the load. This natural fact has 
not been overlooked by the world's packers. The 
Swiss guide and the Eed Man alike have devised 
frames of one sort or another to take the place 
of the arms and hands doubled behind under the 
tail of the pack, and the Alaska pack, with its 
wooden side frames, is the prospector's answer 
to the same requisite. One of our best outfitting 
firms has worked up this experience into a new 



24 CAMPING OUT 

pack, consisting of a light rectangular steel frame 
inside of which is secured a stout canvas square 
stretched taut, the frame being perhaps 10 by 16 
inches. This frame has a V-shaped form in the 
centre of the top bar, to which are attached broad 
shoulder straps. At the two upper corners are at- 
tached the ends of the tump thongs, and down 
near the lower end are two stout steel uprights 
supporting a belt-shaped leather hip strap, so as 
to tilt the load backward and keep the pack from 
getting your back hot and sweaty. It also prevents 
it getting down into that fatal spot, the small of 
your back, from which even a light load will soon 
pull you down. The shoulder straps not only take 
part of the load off the tump strap, but they steady 
the load so that one's hands are free. Any load 
you have can be lashed to this carrying frame or 
pack, and the amount that a light man can carry 
with it is surprising. I toted a 160-pound man 
with it with ease, yet I only weigh 130 pounds 
and limit my knapsack load to 30 pounds. 

The earliest forerunner of this type of pack is 
the Iroquois pack frame, mentioned before. This 
is a rectangular frame, 14 inches high by 18 wide, 
and its horizontal bottom sticks out some 12 inches 
from the wearer 's back. The drawing shows how 
it is made. Three 1-inch sticks of hickory 14 inches 



PACKING YOUR OUTFIT 25 

long are first out, and these are notched in about 
an inch from the ends and at intervals of every 
3 inches, to take the %-inch frame members. 
These are hickory sticks, 36 inches long and 
notched out near the ends and middle to pass 
around the notches in the inch sticks, which, being 
tough, pliable hickory, they will easily do. They 
are doubled over the ends and lashed with thongs 
made of the bark of the same hickory (mockernut). 
Strips of the same bark are next woven in between 
the frame members, and two strong platted thongs 
are run from the top to outer corners of the hori- 
zontal frame, and you then have a strong carrying 
frame made entirely out of one hickory sapling 
and which will carry any kind of load. The tump 
thongs and strap are also made of hickory bark 
in this particular specimen, the strap being soft- 
ened on the forehead side with woven cedar bark. 
The thongs are tied around the upper cross mem- 
ber of the frame. Any one with a taste for wood- 
craft should be able to complete such a frame in 
two hours, with no other tool than a jack-knife. 

A sort of first cousin to the tump strap is the 
Siwash pack, much used in the Northwest. To 
get around the fact that the shoulder strap of a 
packsack, if heavily loaded, will stop circulation 
in your arms, the Northwestern Indians trans- 



26 CAMPING OUT 

ferred the pressure of the strap to the shoulder 
and back muscles, thus getting away from the big 
arteries and veins that pass up under the muscles 
of the breast. To do this a yoke crosses the chest, 
well above the swell of the breast muscles and two 
broad straps proceed from this yoke over the 
shoulders and around the pack. From their ends 
a couple of cords are led up under the armpits 
and tie with a slip knot in grommets or eyelets 
in the yoke. Thus no heavy breast muscles come 
under compression from any strap, and in case 
an instant release from the pack is wanted, simply 
pull the ends of the ropes, pulling out the slip 
knots and letting the pack fall off your back. 

When we get into the realm of light loads, the 
packsack comes into its own. If the straps are led 
from a single yoke or ring in the pack they will 
have no tendency to come off out over the shoulder 
ends so that no breast strap is needed, and the 
weight of the pack will be put on the heavy muscles 
of the neck and the pressure upon the breast mus- 
cles relieved. This at once eliminates two princi- 
pal objections to the shoulder harness, its danger 
to the carrier in case of a tumble due to the breast 
strap holding it fast and its constriction of the cir- 
culation channels. For, with no breast strap, a 
throw of the shoulder disengages the pack, and the 



PACKING YOUR OUTFIT 27 

location of the straps meeting in one point behind 
the neck runs them where they cannot do harm to 
the bodily circulation, whence all good packs are 
so hung. And so we find it a favourite pack for all 
light hunting, cruising, etc., and a number of good 
models are to be had. The simplest is a plain 
strap harness, capable of carrying two or more 
tump bags side by side. This is furnished also 
with a variation in the shape of tump line carry- 
ing strap and thongs in addition to the shoulder 
harness. The weight is very light, li/4 pounds, 
and if one's tent or other article of equipment is 
used for the pack, no useless weight is carried. 

For short hikes or trips where only a blanket 
and light cook kits and a few pounds of provisions 
are carried, or for daily hunting away from the 
base camp where a few light articles like camera, 
lunch, binoculars, a belt axe and a stew pot are 
taken along, there are a number of light ruck sacks 
on the market weighing from 12 ounces to a pound, 
and these provide the best way to carry these 
things, where they will not be in the way when 
going through the brush or climbing. The small- 
est pack I know of is that originally made by me 
for my little daughter out of a shotgun shell bag. 
The straps of this were cut off and re-arranged as 
shoulder straps, and were held from slipping by 



28 CAMPING OUT 

a tape across the breast. This bag is now carried 
by my youngest son, aged six, and holds his quilt 
sleeping bag, some tackle, a waterproof tarp and 
some small odds and ends, and on top of it is 
strapped his blanket roll. This pack has been out 
with him a number of times, and I note that it is 
now on the market by one of our well-known out- 
fitters. 

Continuous use of the packsack for ten years 
led me to develop its possibilities as a sleeping 
bag. Any bag big enough to hold duffle for a long 
trip will, counting in its flap, be about 6 feet long 
if opened out lengthwise. Supposing that it is 
some 27 inches wide when flattened out, it would 
make the top half of a good sleeping bag if lined 
with some wool batting and wool cloth. Kemained 
then only the bottom to provide for, which was 
easily done by devising a light folding mattress, 
and you had a packsack sleeping bag that could be 
made very warm on very little weight, and did 
away entirely with the bulkiness of an equal 
weight of blankets. I worked over this scheme for 
two years and finally developed a very efficient 
outfit. My original bags were made of heavy 10- 
ounce paraffined duck which had the disadvantage 
of sweating somewhat in a broiling sun. The lin- 
ing was of mackinaw, than which there is nothing 



PACKING YOUR OUTFIT 29 

warmer for its weight unless it is pure wool bat- 
ting. In between the mackinaw and the backing 
went a layer of wool batting, shingled and quilted. 
This covering was warm down to about 32 degrees 
and weighed 4I/2 pounds. For temperatures below 
that I added a second facing of mackinaw, which 
added 2i/^ pounds to the weight of the bag and 
made it warm down to about zero. This was at 
first fastened with glove snap fasteners, but I soon 
found out that all these patent devices are hard to 
repair in the woods, and plain buttons that can be 
sewed on at any time made the best fastener. If 
you stepped on one of those patent glove fasteners 
once it was out of commission from that time on. 
This pack was laced up with rawhide thongs 
rove through grommets along the edges spaced 
every three inches. To make a wind-tight seal on 
both sides and bottom of the bag I left an overlap 
of four inches of mackinaw which was tucked in 
when the bag was laced up. The bottom half of 
this bag was originally just a browse bag to be 
filled with any kind of browse and it was always 
the warm side, no matter what went in it. It is 
the top side that must have plenty of covering. 
But green browse is cold, and if picked in snowy 
weather will have snow and ice on it which thaws 
out from the heat of your body. So the bag was 



30 CAMPING OUT 

made with a waterproof interior lining and faced 
with blanketing, bringing its weight up to three 
pounds. Then, to get away from picking browse, 
I experimented further with this bottom half until 
I finally worked it into its present form, a thin 
mattress of an inch of wool batting, faced with 
flannel, and backed with light waterproof cloth, the 
bag feature being omitted entirely. It is better in 
the long run to pile your browse where you want 
it and can get at sticks and cones that may be in 
the heap, and if all this is in a bag you will have a 
fine time chasing a cone or root six feet away from 
the open end, which cone or root has managed to 
get just where it will puncture your shoulder 
blades. As it now stands, the mattress weighs 3 
pounds, as before; can be thrown down on wet 
browse or none, and is even reasonably comfort- 
able on a plain board floor. 

It took six minutes to lace up this bag as a sleep- 
ing bag or a packsack. As you have all the time 
in the world to do this after supper, I never 
bothered about any patent hooks ; but my friends, 
who think they want speed, insisted on snap hooks 
instead of the lacing. These I put on originally 
in army bronze, but as this must be done with a 
special riveting machine, impossible to come at in 
the woods, and as the machine was continually 



PACKING YOUR OUTFIT 31 

setting the rivets so hard that they snapped off 
later from the strain, I used plain japanned steel 
hooks that can be put on with an ordinary tubular 
rivet with a nail and a camp axe, and in that form 
the packsack sleeping bag is now on the market by 
one of our well-known outfitting firms. I still use 
my old laced bags ; mackinaw for spring and fall, 
caribou skin for the dead of winter. To add the 
latter lining is the simplest thing in the world; 
simply cut buttonholes here and there around the 
edge of the skin and sew buttons in the bag lining 
to match, and there you are, a bag for summer 
with one lining, for spring and fall with the second 
mackinaw lining added, and for dead of winter 
with the skin instead of the second lining. The 
skin is pieced out with double mackinaw where its 
irregularities come within the standard width of 
the lining, and it weighs a trifle under four pounds. 
Under the general head of packing come fibre 
and tough veneered wood cases for carrying camp- 
ing outfits, also the pack baskets so popular in the 
Adirondacks, and, for permanent camps, a camp 
chest is worth mention. When you have a lot of 
truck and are going to stay a while and get there 
by team, the old camp chest is gotten out and 
packed with battle-worn duffle, the expressman 
rung up, and you see it going away among ordi- 



32 CAMPING OUT 

nary travellers' trunks, on its way trainwards, 
while you follow at leisure, not loaded down with 
unsightly duflfle. Arrived at the camp site, the 
chest is unpacked and made into a cupboard or 
table, and your stuff is all there, nothing smashed 
or torn, nor have you had to worry or look after 
it in any way. It can be checked like a trunk, 
which a plain box cannot, as it is against the bag- 
gage office rules, a fact that means a lot of money 
saved where a long trip is contemplated. 

The strong, light wooden suitcase is in the same 
class. It makes a fine camp table spread out flat 
over four stakes, carries a whole collection of 
breakable and bendable things, and can be checked 
and shipped about the country over ordinary 
transportation routes without its owner worrying 
over ripped and torn handles. 

The bibulous party, well and unfavourably 
known to me as Eddie Breck, author of ' ' The Way 
of the Woods," is here disclosed completely sur- 
rounded by pack baskets. This favourite of the 
North Woods weighs around seven pounds with a 
waterproof skin, and has the recommendation that 
it will carry articles not able to stand rough usage 
without breaking them, will hold a bushel of stuff, 
can be locked and shipped check or express, and 
carries well in the woods with tump strap and 



PACKING YOUR OUTFIT 33 

shoulder harness. It combines the stiffness of the 
frame pack with the carrying capacity of the large 
pack bundle, and is by no means to be sniffed at 
by those who live outside of the North "Woods, its 
native home. 

In using the plain shoulder harness, described 
before in this article, to my mind the best dufiBe 
bag is the side-opening one whose lips roll tight 
around a maple stick. I have used two of these 
bags for years, and they always come along when 
I have a large party on my hands. One of them, 
with a simple harness made out of school-book 
straps and two army haversack shoulder straps, is 
the pet pack of my eldest boy, who carries it with 
his summer blanket rig looped around it. Inside 
are food bags, tackle, personal kit and extra cloth- 
ing, besides innumerable small articles of use 
about camp. 

As soon as camp is reached this bag is opened 
up and hung up by its lip rod on two stakes near 
the cook fire, and in a few minutes it is unpacked 
and re-filled with all the foodbags of the party. 
The kitchen is thus handy to the chef in a jiffy. 
I never yet got anything wet in those bags ; water 
does not easily get around the rod and its wrap- 
pings, and it will float with its contents if dropped 
overboard as well as the end-opening tump bag. 



34 CAMPING OUT 

Its original use for campers was as a personal kit 
bag for extra clothing and the numerous small 
articles that go for comfort and cleanliness about 
camp. The nine pockets with which it is lined, 
and its cubic space of 22 inches long by 9-inch 
diameter make it a fine camp bureau when hung 
up on two stakes in the tent near your sleeping 



This chapter would seem a little lop-sided with- 
out some paragraphs on that great Western divi- 
sion of camp life, horse packing. It is a subject 
of much interest, in particular for the Eastern 
sportsman about to take his first trip into the 
Eockies. Out there the horse is about the only 
means of transportation, the canoe having but 
little water suitable for its use. When moving the 
teepee the Indians of the plains let Mother Earth 
carry half the load on travois poles, thus doubling 
what a horse could carry on his back. I have be- 
fore me a travois net of the Dakotahs or Sioux. 
It measures 4 feet 6 inches long by 3 feet wide, 
shaped as an oval, of stout hickory an inch thick 
and woven with rawhide like a spider web inside. 
The weaving begins with a long double, maybe six- 
teen inches long, and crossed at every point with 
the thongs which radiate to the rim. Four thongs 
lead out to the rim at each end of the oval and 




TUMP STRAP AND 
TARP. PACK 



PACKING YOUR OUTFIT 35 

three at each side; four concentric rings of raw- 
hide across all these radial thongs, making a net 
that will hold 300 pounds of duffle, beginning with 
the heavy buffalo hide teepee bundle. This load 
was carried by two long poles of lodgepole pine, 
whose lower ends dragged over the prairie bunch 
grass and whose upper ends met in a saddle on 
the horse's back. An Ojibway dog travels stands 
beside this horse travels. Two five-foot poles 
make the dog's carrying device, and to them is 
lashed a small oval net with hickory rim. A pad 
of buckskin stuffed with cedar bark goes on the 
dog's back, and the poles cross through it, besides 
which he has a belly band also passing through 
the pad and holding the whole travels on his back. 
The Indian babies were the most frequent riders 
in this travels, and many a time, when the dogs 
scented water or game, was there grand excite- 
ment on the prairie as the dogs bolted with their 
precious human freight ! 

The packsaddle was used by all the western 
horse Indians, and differed not greatly from our 
own except for an immense horn on the front saw- 
buck to hang up pappoose cradles and small-child 
bags. The standard western packsaddle has two 
sawbucks, rawhided or rivetted to wooden plates 
shaped to fit a horse's back. This constitutes the 



36 CAMPING OUT 

so-called ''tree" to which the latigo straps, breech- 
ing and breast straps, and the two cinches are at- 
tached. This tree is the foundation on which you 
put from 120 to 200 pounds of load, so under it 
must go a pack blanket, usually hair filled padding. 
On it go two kyacks, panniers or alforjas, on op- 
posite sides, with stout straps which hook over the 
cross-trees. The first of these carrying boxes is 
of fibre; the second is generally constructed of 
canvas with wood lining so as to in a measure 
protect the contents, and the alforja is a canvas 
saddlebag, no less, heavily stitched and leather 
reinforced and provided with stout leather loops 
to hang from the horns of the saddle. Which of 
these pack boxes are taken depends upon the ma- 
terial to be carried ; a good outfit should have both 
panniers and alforjas, the former for canned 
goods, tinware, etc., and the latter for ordinary 
duffle that cannot be hurt with the rope pressure. 
When they are loaded and hung over the trees the 
sling ropes are next brought into play, the object 
of them being to not only tie the load together but 
to take the weight of the panniers off their straps 
as much as may be : they usually pass around the 
pannier, up over rear horn, down under the pan- 
nier, and end in a loop-knot tied in the part of the 
rope crossing in front of the pannier. This much 



PACKING YOUR OUTFIT 37 

is done as soon as the panniers are hung and be- 
fore the rest of the pack is made up. The pack 
then is built up on the pannier tops, usually two 
duffle bags on top of the panniers on each side, a 
large central load like a tent in the centre and? 
some uneasy angular load on the cushion thus 
formed. The sling ropes for the panniers are then 
slung across the load and tied in the loop on op- 
posite sides. So far so good; a tarp is thrown 
over the load, and then — in no two parts of the 
country will you find any one tying the same dia- 
mond hitch! We once had a hitch-tying contest, 
taken part in by eight men, all of whom had packed 
their own horses in various parts of the West. 
All tied good hitches, but as no two of them were 
alike the judge resigned after tying, himself, the 
worst looking hitch of the lot! I tied the Lone 
Jack hitch in that contest, and I use two hitches, 
both of which have served me well in the West, 
the first being the Lone Jack Hitch described and 
illustrated in my book, ''Camp Craft," and the 
second is the squaw hitch so much used by lone 
prospectors and so easy to tie that even the In- 
dians learned it. And I may put in an aside here 
that the Noble Bed Man seems to be a good deal 
too simple-minded to get the intricacies of any of 
the diamond hitches into his head, for never on 



38 CAMPING OUT 

two successive days have I known them to tie one 
without getting it scrambled. Here is, then, the 
squaw hitch : Cinch strap with hook on near side. 
Go around to far side and throw yourself the loop 
(or else throw cinch strap over by its rope so hook 
will come around to you). Come back on near 
side and pull cinch tight. Shove rest of loop under 
rope where it crosses pack about the centre of the 
load. Grab this loop, pull it back over rope and 
catch it around far pannier. Doing this will send 
you to the far side, around the critter's stem. 
While you are there, do a tight job of getting that 
rope around the off pannier. Come around under 
horse 's neck, holding the running part of the rope, 
and pass it around front corner of near pannier. 
End up by bringing it up around rear corner of 
near pannier. The hitch is now done, but is more 
or less slack and will work loose if tied, for it has 
no diamond to take up any slack. Tighten by 
grabbing the running rope just above the cinch 
hook and setting up for all you're worth; follow 
this slack around the pack, tightening the far pan- 
nier, and then the near pannier until you have out 
all the slack that will come. Then tie over central 
crossing point. This is by no means so good a 
hitch as the Lone Jack, which is practically the 
Government single diamond, but it is easily learnt 



PACKING YOUR OUTFIT 39 

and remembered. The diagrams hereto ought to 
make it clear. ''Cinch up till he grunts" is the 
only safe rule with it. 

A final trek in western prairie or mountain 
travel is the lone saddle trip. Here again one 
studies lightness and also the size of the package, 
for it is obvious that a bulky parcel like a knap- 
sack cannot be carried on a saddle horse unless 
you want to give him his reins and hold the pack 
in your arms like a baby. It cannot go on behind 
the saddle, for then you cannot throw your leg over 
in mounting, and it cannot go on your back, as it 
will be impossible to keep your seat with any 
comfort, due to the jouncing of the horse's gait. 
In fact, the only place a packsack can go on a 
horse is as a central load on a packhorse already 
packed as to panniers. But, at that, do not leave 
it back east, for it is a good parcel to carry your 
duffle in, and will come handy in a hiking trip 
through the mountains away from the base camp. 
But, for the lone saddle trip, you are dependent 
upon saddle bags and what can be gotten into the 
slicker roll on behind in the cantle thongs. This 
has a limit of height of about nine inches, and 
of length of about three feet. However, in that 
you can get a blanket and a light tent, or, better, 
a rectangular tarp which can go over your face 



40 CAMPING OUT 

and body when sleeping out on the prairie in 
starry nights, and will make a leanto in rain. A 
few provisions can be strung out along inside that 
roll, and maybe an extra sweater for cold nights, 
but that will be about all. The saddle bags go 
behind the saddle seat, have a light cinch strap to 
keep them from flapping up and down at a gallop 
and in them will go the smaller provisions, alumi- 
num mess kit, ammunition, tackle and small duffle. 
With these two bags and the slicker roll any old- 
timer can make himself entirely comfortable on 
such a trip. My boyhood hunting chum made just 
such a trip one summer, covering some 1,500 miles 
by saddle horse alone, from the Indian mesas of 
eastern New Mexico, across New Mexico and 
Arizona, up through California to the Mt. Hamil- 
ton range near Sacramento, where he finally found 
so lovely a spot in the mountains that he went 
and got him a wife, settled down and built him a 
home there and has lived happily ever after ! 

It's a fascinating subject, travel in the wild 
spots of the earth ; many of my monthly camps are 
made solely with this end in view, what hunting 
or fishing that may turn up being merely a side 
line. 



CHAPTEE II 

WITH KNAPSACK AND RIFLE 

It sounds fascinating, that ideal of a foot-loose 
and free hiking trip through the mountains with 
rifle or rod and one's complete camping outfit on 
one's back, and, in a way, it is easy. Any one can 
go light — but to go light, and right is one of 
the arts, requiring the utmost knowledge and study 
of conditions. Any one can go light — roughing it 
and enduring hardships — for a short time, say, 
three days, but how about two weeks or a month 
of it? 

Here are a few of the conditions that must be 
provided for if the cruise is to be of indefinite 
duration and to be a pleasurable experience rather 
than a species of punishment: The weather will 
change — you will get everything, bitter cold, rain, 
snow and hot weather; they all occur in almost 
any two weeks of spring or fall in our climate j 
your food must be nourishing, palatable and good 
for your body to assimilate, yet light — that is, 
your cooking outfit must boil, bake, fry and stew ; 
41 



42 CAMPING OUT 

your pack must weigh altogether less than thirty- 
pounds, except at the start, where thirty-five for 
the first few days is permissible ; you must have a 
tent to live in at night, and your sleeping accom- 
modations must be warm, cool, comfortable and 
not bulky ; you must have light at night ; provision 
against sickness and accident ; and change of cloth- 
ing, because of wetness, perspiration, burning up 
or scorching; all this must go on your back or 
about your person and be light enough so that 
carrying it fifteen miles a day in the mountains is 
no hardship. 

Many hands make light work, so that, in a party 
of four or more, all these matters are so subdivided 
among the members of the party that almost any 
modern camping equipment is ample. But sup- 
pose the party is but two, or a lone hike? The 
writer's habits of hitting the trail often at all 
months of the year have led him to devise a two- 
man outfit that meets all these conditions and 
seems worthy of description in some detail for the 
benefit of others. 

I have but two packs : the January pack and the 
June one. One is used from November to April 
and the other from May to October. They both 
weigh about the same when I start out, from 
thirty to thirty-five pounds, and my own weight 



WITH KNAPSACK AND RIFLE 43 

is 130, height five feet eight inches; strong for 
my weight, but a lightweight, a cold-frog, easily- 
fatigued and quickly susceptible to poorly cooked 
food. So much for the human equation. To meet 
the demands for comforts in the wilderness for my 
wretched body I have been forced to do consider- 
able experimenting, scheming and devising. Yet 
time and again have I set off into the mountains 
with one or the other of those packs, taking along 
a friend, and have spent from five days to a week 
fishing, hunting or timber-cruising in most enjoy- 
able fashion, with no fatigue and no harrowing 
hardships. Yet I have had more than my share 
of stern weather conditions to face. 

Almost invariably the friend has showed up 
with a bulky sleeping-rig weighing not less than 
fifteen pounds, a duffle-bag, weighing as much 
more, crammed with his personal effects, no means 
of carrying it, and no reserve to carry his share 
of the outfit. If he could carry just his share 
of the grub alone I would not kick, but as soon as 
he gets out of the range of porters, autos, teams 
and canoes he begins to make heavy weather of it, 
and because of his duffle the trips often cost double 
the intended expense. As a rule the best solution 
is to fit him up with one of my own outfits and 
leave his stuff at the house. 



44 CAMPING OUT 

To begin with the weather. Most tyros do not 
seem to realise that, while the weather may be fine 
and dandy when starting out, it will most likely 
be mean within two days from the start of the 
trip, and, as the old guide used to say, ''What's 
the weather got to do with it, anyway!" No one 
proposes to den up and halt the trip just because 
the woods are wet or it is drizzling, though I 
usually make myself comfortable in camp in a 
hard rainstorm, unless it is only a thunder shower. 
But the candidates show up with no raincoat, light 
khaki coat and trousers, no hat that will keep rain 
out of the neck and off the shoulders, and then ex- 
pect to duck for shelter at the first sign of storm. 

Tied up with this consideration is that of get- 
ting through the train trip and city connections 
without looking like the wild man of Borneo. No 
one likes to look conspicuous or bizarre in making 
one's train, yet at most little jumping-off places 
the facilities for changing city clothes — and dis- 
posing of them when changed — are limited, not 
to say absent. My rig, winter or summer, has 
boiled down to a grey woollen suit, the coat of 
which was once of a standard double-breasted city 
suit, and the trousers are all-wool homespun, 
rather thin-cut lower down so that they will fold 
easily inside one's hunting-boots. I long ago 



WITH KNAPSACK AND RIFLE 45 

discarded the army breeches ; they are no good to 
sleep in, and the cuffs are a nuisance, particularly 
if you are wearing larrigans that come not much 
higher than your shoes. Going to the train I wear 
the above-described suit with the trousers pulled 
down outside my hunting-boots, sport a linen col- 
lar and shirt, a red leather four-in-hand tie pre- 
sented to me by a cowboy friend, a Stetson hat 
and a green woven-wool skating vest. Except for 
the hat, I look about the same as any one else in 
city duds and attract no particular attention. 

I never check the packsack; its straps and 
buckles are too apt to be ripped off by our bag- 
gage-smashing gentry. I once saw it going by 
on a trunk truck, down the station platform, buried 
under a mountain of suitcases and trunks, and 
when it was transferred to the baggage-car the 
baggage-man just looked at its tag, disregarded 
the handle by which I always carry it in the city, 
grabbed one of the straps and yanked the whole 
pack bodily from under all those trunks ! I set 
my teeth and hoped that it would be handed to 
me at the jumping-off place ready to carry. Luck- 
ily it did get through all right, the strap held 
under that big brute's full strength — but never 
again! Another thing: no matter how much 
assured that your pack is or will be on your train 



46 CAMPING OUT 

— ^have you ever gotten off at some lonely shack 
beside the rails, one of those with one telegraph 
operator for general factotum, and had the train 
go on without your baggage being handed out? 
Next train is next day, and it will be up on that 
one no doubt, the man assures you as he locks 
up the station and goes home, leaving you in a 
fine frame of mind! 

No. I have a regular shawl-strap to go around 
my packsack, and I take the pack right along in 
Pullman or day-coach, just like any suitcase, and 
then I know it will be there at the jumping-off 
place ! In dead of winter I add a mackinaw coat 
to the above outfit, but all through the hunting 
season and the spring trouting the grey double- 
breasted coat is ample. I never wear it on the 
trail, the wool vest alone is plenty; coat is good 
at night or in rain or biting northwest wind. The 
footgear I wear on' all these hiking trips is the 
high cruiser moccasin. I do not object to the 
sixteen-inch height, it never binds my legs the 
way they say it will, and it is much handier in get- 
ting through briers and deep bogs than any lower 
boot. The pair is light, and I always tie the 
laces in a flat knot over the instep before lacing 
up higher. Otherwise the tension caused by the 
calf muscles will steal lacing from over the in- 



WITH KNAPSACK AND RIFLE 47 

step, making the boot tight there, or sometimes it 
is just the other way and the instep steals from 
the calf, binding the muscles of your leg. A flat 
knot over the instep obviates both troubles. 

On leaving the train I shoulder the pack and 
hike for the nearest timber. A temporary stop 
is made here, trousers are tucked into the boots 
and relaced, the linen is taken off and stowed 
in a small bag in the pack and my flannel shirt 
comes out of the latter and is put on, also belt- 
axe and hunting-knife. Using the same leather 
necktie, I am ready for the trail. In a hot spell 
the rig is uncomfortably hot, but at that it is bet- 
ter than the painfully sunburned legs that my 
friends sport after a hot day, and better than the 
discomfort of sun on khaki trousers which offer no 
protection against it. If it comes on to rain I 
get the ''fairy" rubber coat out of the pack and 
put it on. It weighs nineteen ounces and takes up 
about as much room in the pack as a pair of socks. 
It is a very hot coat and in a cold, icy wind or 
thrown over one at night, is a very acceptable 
addition to one's clothing. It protects you from 
rain down to about four inches above the knees. 
The boots take care of everything below the knees 
and the remnant I let get wet ; the trousers being 
wool, this is no great hardship. Meanwhile my 



48 CAMPING OUT 

friends are shivering in their clammy army khaki 
breeches, and want to stop and build a fire. Sev- 
eral times I have fished, rowed or cruised right 
on through a thunder squall that half filled the 
boat, wearing that little coat and letting the wool 
trousers get wet around the knees ; they dried out 
without my knowing it later. Wool protects you 
from cold; it also protects you from heat, which 
is not so well appreciated, and in an open boat in 
the hot sunshine I would rather have wool trousers 
and be warm than khaki and be hot. 

This rounds up all the trail clothing, except what 
to take for a change. One needs, of course, night- 
socks and bed-slippers for the sleeping-bag, and a 
wool toque to pull over your head for a night- 
cap. With head and feet comfortable you can 
sleep soundly even if the bed is hard; without 
them cared for, no bed will bring sleep. I confess 
also to a little down pillow a foot square that 
always gets into my pack. Almost any mountain 
of browse, boots, socks and extra clothes mil an- 
swer for the basis of a pillow, but it is apt to 
be uncomfortable on one's face and ears unless 
topped off by the little pillow aforesaid. 

For the rest of the change, one more pair of 
socks and a pair of wool underdrawers is sufl&- 
cient for a week's trip. Any catastrophe that 



WITH KNAPSACK AND RIFLE 49 

involves wetting you to your undershirt calls for 
a general drying-out fire. But wet pants and 
underdrawers are the natural concomitant of al- 
most any day in the woods, and if the former are 
wool they will dry on you without discomfort if 
you can pull on a dry pair of underdrawers and 
dry socks underneath after the tent is pitched 
and all the chores are done. 

So much for the clothes on the backpack cruise. 
You will note that most of them are worn on you 
from the start, saving much bulk and weight in 
the pack to be carried to the jumping-off place. 
Now, about sleeping outfit : I use my own design 
of packsack sleeping-bag, in which the pack is the 
upper surface of the sleeping-bag laced up along 
its sides to make a pack 28 inches square with a 
20-inch flap. When unlaced and straightened out 
this pack makes a covering six feet four inches 
long, and, as its lining of wool batting and Mack- 
inaw is 34 inches wide, you have considerable 
flap to hold in on each side. The bottom piece is 
a long, seven-foot by 30-inch mattress filled with 
wool batting, its underside being of waterproof 
canvas so that it can be thrown right down on 
damp or snowy browse. This wool lining was 
originally about a quarter inch thick, being in- 
tended to put down on a pile of browse, but as 



50 CAMPING OUT 

picking any quantity of the latter was a nuisance, 
I first tried a stick bed, which was an improve- 
ment, but weighed three pounds, so I finally added 
enough wool batting to make my under mattress 
an inch thick. As the wool is very light, it only 
made the mattress weigh a pound more; the 
original weight was three pounds — adding the 
wool to make it thicker brought it up to four 
pounds, which was better than carrying even a 
three-pound stick bed additional. This makes a 
good bed, for, unless the ground underneath the 
tent is all rocks, it is plenty comfortable enough 
with a hollow scooped for hips and shoulders and 
a few leaves or pine needles thrown in to take 
off the rough edges, so to speak. The cover or 
packsack, I might add, weighs four pounds in 
single mackinaw wool lining and waterproof back- 
ing for the June pack, warm down to about 36°; 
four and a half pounds in caribou skin for the 
January pack, warm down to zero. 

The total weight of the sleeping outfit is then 
about eight pounds ; a good wool quilt or fur bag 
will weigh the same and can be stowed in a duffle- 
bag and carried in a harness, so I do not claim 
anything very much for my scheme but compact- 
ness. A wool quilt bag, six feet by thirty inches 
by twenty-two inches, at the foot, can be made 





TUMP STRAP AND CARRYING 
HARNESS 



HITTING THE TRAIL WITH 
A 30-POXJND PACK 




TARPAULIN A-TENT WITH CHEESECLOTH ENDS 



WITH KNAPSACK AND RIFLE 51 

up by any one who can run a sewing-machine, 
buying light, fine-woven material like sateen or 
galatea and laying out the wool bats between the 
sheets, quilting them and then sewing the two 
quilts together all around except two feet left 
open for a flap. Such a bag will weigh about five 
pounds and will be warm and comfortable for 
cold-weather camping (which is the cream of it, 
if you will believe me!). This bag and your tent 
could go in an eight-inch tump-bag, with cook-kit, 
provisions and other duffle in a similar bag, and 
with a leather harness to carry them side by side, 
you would have a light trail outfit quite as good 
as the one I am describing. Only, limit the weight 
of your sleeping outfit sternly to eight pounds, 
for there is no fun in breaking your back with a 
heavy load. 

Now for a tent. I would set its limit at three 
pounds, and its capacity two men, or three at a 
pinch. A light A-tent, Forester, Hudson's Bay 
or Blizzard is a good one for two. For three I 
have lately devised one that I call, with becoming 
modesty, ''the Perfect Shelter Tent." It was 
born of the following considerations : If you want 
a perfect sleep you must get all the forest air 
into your lungs that the law allows, yet keep out 
of draughts. Just try the difference between that 



52 CAMPING OUT 

drowsy, stuffy feeling with which you awaken in 
a closed tent with airtight and watertight walls 
and the springy, elastic, exhilarating feeling that 
you experience when arising from a night slept in 
the open — such a sleep ! — and you will grab after 
that sensation thereafter as one of the desirables 
of the trip. Many experienced campers, mailmen, 
timber-cruisers and woodsmen that I know scorn 
a tent except as a shelter to keep off dew and rain, 
and their caterpillar-like forms are apt to be 
stumbled on in almost any hollow in the leaves 
about camp after retiring hours, each in his fur 
or wool sleeping-bag, just as close to nature as 
he can get. 

I approve of all this — except for the wind! 
Many a night have I slept in the vicinity of Aber- 
crombie, whose thunderous snores filled the atmos- 
phere as he slept the sleep of the truly just 
with nothing over him but a tarp stretched be- 
tween four stakes, and the icy blasts caressing 
the outside of his sleeping-bag! I admire that — 
all but the draughts, but I prefer the comfort of 
having a den sheltered from the wind, where the 
fire heat can form a hiatus of good cheer and one 
can spread one's sleeping-bag therein upon retir- 
ing and breathe the mountain air — ^minus those 
breezes which make it too much of a good thing I 



WITH KNAPSACK AND RIFLE 53 

And so I was led to devise the Perfect Shelter 
Tent. You ask three things of a shelter tent: 
protection from rain, wind and insects. The roof 
of this one was made of two pieces of waterproof 
army shelter clothing, thirty-three inches wide 
and eight feet three inches long. This was sewed 
up and hemmed top and bottom, giving a sheet 
five feet four inches wide by eight feet three inches 
long, weighing three pounds — and it would hold 
water in bags ! Grommets were put in along the 
front and back and two of them a foot up from 
the back. Deducting this foot, you have seven 
feet three inches for the slope, which, for a rise 
of four feet six inches at the front, would give 
a horizontal floor line of six feet three inches. 
Now, four feet six inches is just the width of fine- 
mesh mosquito netting, or you can get it in scrim 
or hospital gauze (which keeps out punkies) by 
sewing up one and one-half widths of the latter. 
I chose the mosquito stuff, because one does not 
often have punkies trying to break in after sun- 
down, while mosquitoes are indefatigable. Two 
pieces were cut out of the bolt of four-foot six- 
inch mosquito cloth (which cost 25 cents). They 
were one foot high at the back, four feet six inches 
at the front, six feet three inches long, and the full 
width was continued to make half the front of the 



54 CAJNIPING OUT 

tent, or two feet eight inches more. These pieces 
were sewed under the side hem of the roof and 
edged along the bottom with double grey tape to 
give the mosquito-blind strength and to have 
something to which to fasten tie tapes. 

Then the tent was set up. Two two-foot stakes 
were cut and driven in for the back of the tent, 
the bottom grommets tied to them and the ones 
a foot up the back were tied above them on the 
same stakes. Two front stakes five feet high were 
cut and put in six feet three inches from the 
rear stakes, tying the bottom ties of the mosquito- 
blind to their feet and the front grommets of the 
roof up as high as they would go — four feet six 
inches. These front stakes were then guyed out, 
bringing the tent roof nice and taut, the side pegs 
were driven and tied and the tent was up. We 
had, in effect, a sheltering, rainproof roof, and all 
the sides and front of mosquito-blind. An airy, 
comfortable tent, not draughty, for the netting 
killed that, and such a sleep as you pulled off in 
that tent! For an ordinary rain in the woods it 
worked all right and rode out several thunder- 
storms, for the rain simply rolled down the out- 
side of the netting, but for a driving rain or a gale 
of wind it needed a light side-piece. This was 
made of brown galatea, weighing altogether six 



WITH KNAPSACK AND RIFLE 55 

ounces, and it was provided with snap buttons at 
every six inches, male half on the side-piece and 
females on the tent, under the edges. This side- 
piece could go on either side that the wind hap- 
pened to be coming from. Finally we added a 
verandah cloth across the front of the tent, bring- 
ing the total weight up to three pounds twelve 
ounces, and this tent was out with me four times 
that fall, sleeping two men and a husky boy in 
plenty of comfort, and it had rain, storm, gale and 
sharp, cold weather to try it out. The snap but- 
tons you can get at any notion counter in a dry- 
goods store and sew on yourself wherever needed. 
We used six more of them to snap up the front 
edges of the mosquito-blind, but generally it was 
closed by simply pinning the bottom flat with a 
rock. 

Coming now to cooking and provisions, I was 
some time getting together an ideal outfit for one 
man or two men and a boy. Each carried knife, 
folk, aluminum nine-inch plate and cup in his pack 
as part of his personal outfit. That left the cook- 
ing outfit, for boiling, baking and frying for three, 
up to me. In order to lighten the pack on your 
back as much as possible it is well to subdivide 
wherever feasible, putting axe and knife on your 
belt and hanging the cook-kit by its own strap 



56 CAMPING OUT 

if possible. So the first acquisition was a 25-cent 
tin kidney-shaped beer-growler, holding three 
quarts, which I spied in a city department store. 
This article was originally intended for the nefa- 
rious purpose of rushing the can of a Sunday 
morn, — you know — ^under your coat, hooked to 
your suspenders. Not even a city cop could be ex- 
pected to look unconcerned if you appeared out 
of the speak-easy door brazenly carrying a three- 
quart pail of beer; but the Lord's day takes no 
particular count of thirst, and so the kidney- 
shaped growler had to be invented to keep Satan 
out of mischief. Along comes the Forester in 
the shape of yours truly. He knows nothing of 
beer and its ways, but he does know mulligan, 
and here is just the container for it ! All it wants 
is a canvas bucket to go in, with a strap rivetted 
to the bucket and you have a big part of your 
kit nicely tucked away under your arm and in no 
way interfering with the pack-straps or with 
woods-going. So I sewed up a kidney-shaped pail 
of brown watertight canvas, such as all camp 
buckets are made of, to fit over the growler, rivet- 
ted on a school strap with buckle to adjust the 
height and there you were ! — three quarts of mul- 
ligan or boiled spuds or rice or soup for three hun- 
gry men, and a camp water-pail to boot ! In this 



WITH KNAPSACK AND RIFLE 57 

beer growler went all the smaller provision bags, 
coffee, tea, salt, baking-powder, beef capsules, 
cocoa, cornmeal, dried soup powders — in all about 
three pounds of grub and container. 

The second accessory to this kit was the Stopple 
cook-kit. It is too well known to need much de- 
scription here. It provides a quart container for 
boiling coffee, tea and cocoa, a wire grate for all 
sorts of fire duties, obviating entirely any pole or 
dingle-stick; two fry-pans of the right size and 
shape to fry fish or pop corn, and two big pint 
cups to boil fruits and to have a man's-sized drink 
of coffee. It carried all the accessory forks, 
spoons, mop-sticks and the like, and went in the 
other fellow's pack, weight two pounds. 

Third article, the aluminum baker. No, this is 
not the well-known reflector baker; the smallest 
made is far too large for a trip of this kind. I 
discovered this one in a sporting-goods store, an 
aluminum pan with flat cover and folding handle 
which snapped over the cover to hold it on. It 
is nine inches long by six inches wide and li/^ 
inches deep, nicely dished and intended by its 
makers, I believe, for a fry-pan. A worse one 
would be hard to conceive, for the aluminum han- 
dle would be too hot to hold and too heavy to let 
go of without tipping the pan over. But as a 



58 CAMPING OUT 

baker it would be a star. Aluminum has three 
times the conductivity of steel. It will not scorch 
things because the heat is not locaUsed, but spread 
all over the surface of the metal from the point of 
reception from the flame. In that baker I can 
make a cornbread cake that will melt in your 
mouth and be all in size that two men can gorge. 
Or, I can set a squaw bread dough in it and turn 
out a fine, well-risen biscuit that goes mighty 
fine for breakfast. Grease both interior and inside 
cover of pan, fill half full of dough or batter, set 
on grate over a bed of coals, and build a flourishing 
fire on the cover. In ten minutes open her up and 
take a peek — golden brown underneath — needs a 
bit more browning on top — flip her over on grate 
and bake upside down for five minutes more and 
then set pan aside until wanted. Out of it will 
hop one fine cake — no less ! 

Fourth article ; a nine-inch frying-pan with fold- 
ing handle — for flapjacks. You can make them in 
the Stopple pans, but they are usually busy with 
fish, eggs, bacon or pork cubes, and you want an- 
other pan for the flaps. Then, a deep 7-inch tin 
mixing pan for batters and doughs ; three shallow 
dishes for soups and mulligans; three flat pie 
plates to cover these, and the cook kit is censused. 

Hcx^e is my grub-list for a man and a boy (eats 



WITH KNAPSACK AND RIFLE 59 

more than the man) for four days in the moun- 
tains: 1 lb. bacon, 1 lb. salt pork, 1 lb. rice, ^ 
lb. butter, i/^ lb. lard, y^ lb. coffee, 1 small can 
evaporated cream, 1 box beef capsules, 1 lb. self- 
rising buckwheat flour, 2 lbs. flour, 1 lb. com meal, 
1 lb. sugar, 2 oz. baking powder, 2 oz. tea, 2 oz. 
salt, 1 doz. eggs, 1 lb. prunes, 1 lb. dates, 1 lb. 
apricots, 1 lb. cheese, 1 lb. smoked beef, 4 potatoes, 
4 onions ; total, 18 lbs. Enough to live well, even 
if we caught no fish ; but, with the Kid along, this 
is impossible; he caught all we could eat, fine 
black bass. On the next trip, where we had 
another man along, we added one-third to all of 
the above and came out fine, though the sole fresh 
meat shot or caught happened to be three unlucky 
blackbirds, which fell to a shot from the Kid 's 28 
ga. single shotgun. 

Our breakfast menus were: coffee, flapjacks, 
bacon, omelette, and stewed fruits left over from 
the night before, usually fish besides, all we could 
eat, caught before breakfast that morning. For 
lunches we usually had a feed of dates (nearly 
equal to meat in protein), cheese, smoked beef, 
and, if a fire was built, cocoa and squaw bread. 
The Kid was adept at that; it was his specialty, 
and he generally made one at the breakfast fire and 
set it aside for the midday lunch. 



60 CAMPING OUT 

It never pays to fill up your stomach in the 
woods during the midday stop. The Indian's way 
of two meals every sun is plenty and after a few 
days in the open you do not care for more. I 
often take along Ry-Crisp Swedish whole-wheat 
bread for lunches. It is delicious when toasted 
and very sustaining. It comes in flat crackers 12 
inches in diameter and will keep fresh indefinitely. 
Squaw bread is simply biscuit dough flattened out 
and baked in the frypan, tipping up for brown- 
ing on top as soon as the bottom is firm and 
crusted. A cup of flour, a heaping teaspoonful 
of baking powder, a lump of lard as big as your 
thumb worked into the flour, add just enough milk 
water from a cup into which a bit of evaporated 
cow has been poured, a pinch of salt, and you mix 
up a dough with your spoon, keeping your hands 
away. Bake at once. 

The big meal of the day is, of course, at night- 
fall, when the day's hunting or fishing is done. 
For the first day I usually bring along a pound 
of steak to tide over the gap before the rods or 
guns get to work. The Stopple grate is set up 
and a fire started with the quart container in its 
bracket in the grate and the three-quart growler 
on the grate; in fact, I also stand the Stopple 
container there too, in the curve of the growler, 



WITH KNAPSACK AND RIFLE 61 

to get the heat better. An onion, two potatoes, 
some rice, some chunks of meat, and a big pinch 
of celery salt are started in the growler for a 
mulligan, and rice is put in the container, a small 
grab to each man to a quart of water. This under 
way, I mix my batter for the corn bread ; one cup 
flour, one-half cup corn meal, two heaping tea- 
spoonfuls baking powder, ditto sugar, one-half 
teaspoonful salt; mix all thoroughly in pan and 
add a beaten egg and enough milk water to just 
make it pour slowly. Add finally a thumb of but- 
ter, melted ; stir vigorously and pour into greased 
baker. On the grate with it; pick out all flaming 
brands and put them on cover; add more sticks 
until you have a bright fire on top; maintain a 
bright bed of coals under the grate, and in ten 
minutes the cake will be ready to look at. If com- 
ing along nicely and under side brown, capsize 
on grate and leave five minutes more. Set aside 
in its pan until ready to serve. The two Stopple 
pint cups are filled with water and set on the 
grate. In one goes mixed prunes and apricots, 
with a liberal dose of sugar, and it is allowed to 
stew; the other is set off as soon as it comes to a 
boil and a pinch of tea for each man steeped 
in it. A beef capsule to each man is next stirred 
into the mulligan and grub is then served — mvLl- 



62 CAJVIPING OUT 

ligan, steak or fish, rice, corn bread, tea, and fruit 
for dessert. You '11 never have intestinal troubles 
with that grub! 

How do I carry it? Well, enter here three fric- 
tion-top tins that used to hold carbide, the pound 
size. Cleaned and scalded, they are ready for but- 
ter, lard or suet, and bacon. The expeditionary 
pork goes in another 3 x 5-inch friction tin, and 
fourteen fresh eggs are broken into another, 
where they carry very well, considering. I have 
resurrected whole yolks out of that can after four 
days of trail. Most of this shaken-up egg is fine 
for one-man omelettes. Beat to a frazzle, add a 
drip or two from the cow can, and then into the hot 
greased frypan with the liquid. Let stand a few 
minutes, until brown underneath, flop over and 
serve. The secret of having them fluffy is plenty 
of beating. Vary by breaking in little strips of 
shredded smoked beef. For a somewhat longer 
camp I take along an Arcadia tin which holds a 
pound of codfish meat — ^wonderfully acceptable 
after a diet of fresh meat and fish. Another vari- 
ant is rice and pork cubes. Dice the pork, boil 
in frypan for ten minutes, pour off water and fry 
lightly ; tip the whole works into the rice pail and 
serve. Great eats ! 

After cookie resumes his pipe and partner 



WITH KNAPSACK AND RIFLE 63 

washes up, it is time to break out the carbides 
and look to the sleepin's. There is no use talking 
half the evening and then turning in on a bed 
of rocks and stubs. These are all taken out of the 
tent after supper, hollows dug for hips and shoul- 
ders, the floor tarp spread, or, if none, leaves and 
browse strewn down to cover the indecent naked- 
ness of the soil. 

I might put in here a postscript about the Kid's 
axe. It seems to have been an ice axe at one time 
in its history. It has a cutting edge and pick 
point and it's the handiest ever in a rocky coun- 
try, where tent-stakes are always running into un- 
sympathetic rocks somewhere down in the bowels 
of the earth. The axe was a great clear-the-way 
with its pick point, and it weighed but one pound. 
As the Kid's job was tent-stakes, light firewood 
and the like, this axe filled the specifications for 
him. Speaking of firewood, once you have tried 
trash wood, like pine, cedar and spruce, against 
hardwood like blackjack, chestnut oak and white 
oak, hickory and maple, you will say hard things 
to the man who dares approach your cook-fire with' 
an armful of trash. It is all the difference between 
a meal that takes over an hour to prepare and 
one that is ready in thirty-five minutes. I've seen 
the same pots that refused to boil over a whole 



64 CAMPING OUT 

bed of pine coals, boil like Sam Hill over a few 
embers of blackjack, and when the pots are cold on 
the grate and you want to see some bubbles right 
smart quick, break up a twig fire of dry oak or 
blackjack and see how soon the steam begins to 
shoot out from under the lids! 

These hiking trips have been approaching stand- 
ardisation with me during the last four years. At 
first they would run into weight, and you stag- 
gered under a load in spite of your best planning. 
"With the equipments as they stand now I can count 
on picking up a pack that will not go over thirty- 
two pounds when I start out, and the Kid finds 
that twenty-five pounds is about right for him. As 
for the Littlest Boy, his pack weighs just six 
pounds and includes his raincoat, sleeping bag, 
toilet kit and some tackle, and it all goes in an old 
cartridge bag, costing a dollar, whose straps have 
been rearranged to make a shoulder harness. We 
never think of leaving him behind on our summer 
camps ! 



CHAPTER in 

A LONE HIKE FOR BASS 

For several years there has simmered in the 
back of my mind a project for an ideal one-man 
hiking outfit, with the maximum comfort on the 
minimum weight. Something that would be inde- 
pendent of rain, browse, the other fellow, or any 
combination of the usual wilderness conditions. 
Needless to say that this ideal was some time in 
getting tried out, for my fatal ability as a cook 
has kept me in great demand on camping expedi- 
tions. Cooks are the bane of American existence — 
I may say, proudly enough, that we cooks are the 
elite of society, the most recherche and sought 
after of all human beings! And so it comes to 
pass that, of all my twelve monthly camps during 
all the years, I have not had one when I was not 
the cook and dishwasher for a crowd, which crowd 
usually did all the fishing or hunting and came 
back to dub me a ''good fellow" when it came to 
the eats. 

But, ah, no ! — at last I ran into a kindred spirit 

65 



66 CAMPING OUT 

who would have none of my cooking, Dwight 
Franklin by name. This Dwight is an outdoor 
bug of the deepest dye; lives on three nuts and 
a prune for dinner and a tablespoonful of rocka- 
hominy for supper; a bug chaser and a scientist, 
forsooth; well and unsavourably known to the 
Museum of Natural History. This defendant ap- 
peared before me and demanded a bass trip into 
the mountains of Pennsylvania, and, when several 
deft questions elicited the information that each 
was to do his own grubbing, I flung my strong 
motherly arms around him and hurled him grate- 
fully into the bosom of the Field and Stream fam- 

iiy. 

And so I went home to plan an old-master one- 
man outfit. The idea which had been long sim- 
mering was a combination of stretcher bed and 
tent, similar to the manufactured articles of that 
nature, only I proposed to cut my frame work in 
the forest. All you needed was two of those long, 
skinny maples, about 2i/^ inches at the butt and 
20 feet high, that grow in every thicket. Two 6- 
foot lengths from the butts of these would form 
the stout sides to my stretcher bed, and the rest 
would cut to two pair of shears forming the legs 
of the bed and the frame of the tent. A rope, 
run from the ground up over the two pairs of 




;i,Ti:ii ti:m 




PACKSACK-SLEEPING BAG, MADE UP AS A BAG 



A LONE HIKE FOR BASS 67 

shears and down to a convenient bush or peg, 
would make this whole frame secure, and over the 
rope would be thrown your tent tarp. Lashing 
the bed side poles to these shears about a foot 
above the ground would then give you a comfort- 
able bench to sit on and a fine bed at night. How 
much would the combination weigh? I used two 
yards of 33-inch olive drab Army shelterclothing, 
weighing 7 ounces to the yard for the stretcher 
bed, and the tarp was a piece of Tatelec-treated 
cloth, 8 ft. by 6 ft., weighing li/4 pounds, so the 
weight of my outfit was a shade under 21/2 pounds. 
At first I thought of putting ends to the tarp 
and a screen of scrim mosquito netting clear 
around the front joining the sides, but abandoned 
the idea after some thought, as it would only be 
in the way, confine one to a fixed shape for the 
tent, and be hard to put up. So I ended the tent 
work with just a row of grommets across each 
end, 24 feet of cotton rope for the ridge, and some 
strong twine for tying out the front verandah to 
any angle you wanted it. As to the stretcher bed, 
all of them as manufactured are too wide and too 
heavy, and they bag abominably because of the 
superfluous width. On the Atlantic liners the 
berths are just 22 inches wide, and they sleep fat 
men and thin men alike. On the Go-Sum, my 



68 CAMPING OUT 

power cruiser, the berths are 28 inches at the 
head and 20 inches at the foot. So I folded the 
33-inch goods in six inches on a side, and sewed 
with a double seam for strength, leaving the bed 
21 inches wide and having plenty of size to the 
two side pockets, through which the poles were to 
go. At the head end I tapered the canvas to a 
point and put in a grommet, the idea being not 
only to save weight but to provide a hammock- 
like tie up to the guy rope, and very comfortably 
did my little down pillow fit up in this peak, rais- 
ing my head just high enough, instead of letting 
it down to the level of the rest of the sag of the 
bed. 

Now for bedding I should have preferred with 
this a light wool-and-sateen sleeping-bag weighing 
three pounds. This is easily and cheaply made by 
getting eight yards of brown sateen 28 inches mde 
and making of it four two-yard pieces, 28 inches 
wide at the head and 20 inches at the foot. Be- 
tween each pair of pieces you are to shingle wool 
bats, seven to the pair, hem all around and quilt 
with diagonal cross seams. Then sew the two 
pieces together all around, turn inside out and you 
have your bag ready for use. The cost of this 
bag is about $3.60, and it is warm down to freez- 
ing. 



A LONE HIKE FOR BASS 69 

However, though I made a bag like it for my 
wife several years ago, I did not have the time 
now to make a man's-sized one for myself, but 
took instead my summer-weight packsack sleeping- 
bag, weighing with mattress 71/2 pounds. 

The cook kit came next. First, the good old 
beer growler, a three-quart tin kidney-shaped pail 
carried under your arm in a canvas pail made to 
just slip over it and having a strap to go over 
your shoulders. For all trips of one to three peo- 
ple this is my long suit for mulligans, boils, soups, 
etc. In this went a pound of steak, a half pound 
of bacon, and a half pound of pork; also a lard 
can (Arcadia tin) with eggs packed in the lard, 
a small baking-powder can of the l^-pound size, 
and the emergency match can. 

Next, I needed my little aluminum baJier, with- 
out which I would not be happy. Same is alumi- 
num, 9 by 6 inches by li/^ inches deep, with a 
cover and folding handle which keeps the cover on 
— a miniature Dutch oven and the best little baker 
in the world. In it went the small bags, coffee, 
tea, salt, and a couple of candles. Then I wanted 
my 9-inch steel fry-pan with folding handle, the 
deep aluminum plate to match, two small mixing 
tins, 7 by 2 inches, and my enamelware blue cup 



70 CAMPING OUT 

wdth the thong and stick for fastening to your belt, 
and my outfit of utensils was complete. 

Followed then the miscellany: a bag holding 
the Stopple wire grate and some spoons, a folding 
candle lantern, my camp axe, hunting knife, vest- 
pocket camera, night socks, night cap, rain coat, 
camp mocs, brown sateen pillow, bait casting reel 
and a leather bag of lures, and the pack was ready 
to lace up and take the train. 

For clothing I wore wool outing shirt, khaki 
riding breeches, socks and cruiser moccasins, felt 
hat, grey wool coat, and leather necktie. 

On the 9.15 train of the Erie, I met Dwight, and 
with him was Nicky of the Portly Waistline. Him 
we should have taken out and hanged, ever so 
gently and tenderly, on the nearest rafter of the 
Erie trainshed (than which there is no worse fate), 
but we let him live, to our great subsequent de- 
light, for Nicky was a whole sketch in himself. He 
knew nothing of camping and less of cooking, be- 
ing just from Plattsburg, and he had with him 
the usual swatty's equipment. Army dope from 
tip to toe, including a canteen in a country teem- 
ing with springs and brooks. There was fifty 
pounds of Nicky, measured in duffle, also, extra, 
four or five loaves of bread, a pie, and three 
pounds of steak, in paper packages not otherwise 



A LONE HIKE FOR BASS 71 

attached. But Nicky had a belly, a goodly round 
paunch with fat capon lined; not at all an atro- 
phied first cousin to a vermiform appendix, of 
half -pint capacity, like mine and Dwight's. So 
we let him live, to plough through the pie from 
side to side "while the scenery flew by. 

At Lackawaxen Nicky recalled that he had 
neither knife, fork nor spoon to eat withal, and so 
all but lost the train connection while frantically 
romping around the rural environs of Lackawaxen 
looking for them. However, with the pie stowed, 
we finally tumbled out alongside the rails at Shin- 
er's Eock Cut and hit the trail four miles up 
Perry's Mountain for Tink Pond of beloved mem- 
ories. Nicky shed pools of perspiration, and ar- 
rived at the last lap near the top on all fours with 
his tongue hanging out a foot, but the old Platts- 
burg second wind came to his rescue in time and 
away we went through the brush for Tink. It was 
raining cats and dogs, but that troubled us not, for 
our shirts and their breeches were of electrically 
waterproofed wool and it never penetrated. The 
electric current acts by osmosis, not to put the 
waterproofing between the fibres as in ordinary 
dip solutions, but right into the fibres. Consider 
what happens when a drop of water falls on cloth. 
The fibres take it upandbecomewet. When they are 



72 CAMPING OUT 

full the interstices take up water and also become 
wet, and then the water communicates itself to the 
undergarments and a capillary action is set up 
by which every drop is passed on in to wet still 
more cloth. With the fibres themselves water- 
proofed this does not happen, nor do you get the 
closeness of rubber where the interstices are filled 
with rubber and there is no porosity to pass off 
sweat. With electro-waterproofed fibre the rain- 
drop is simply rejected — it stays outside like dew 
on grass and falls harmlessly to the ground. We 
had further proof of all this when we plunged 
into thick ferns and undergrowth going down to 
the camp site on the lake. Here in less than two 
minutes my khaki breeches were soaking wet; 
another minute and I was wet through to the 
thighs while every step added more water until I 
felt like wading through a stream. Neither Nicky 
nor Dwight was wet at all; just a film of water 
on the outside of their breeches, as severe a test 
as I ever heard of. The same was true of the 
shirts; the only spot where mine was wet was 
where the pack kept pounding against my shoul- 
ders and here the rain had been forced through 
the weave. 

Arrived at the camp the fun began. I cut my 
poles as per schedule and in fifteen minutes had 



A LONE HIKE FOR BASS 73 

my stretcher bed up, the tarp stretched out, the 
pack set on the bed in out of the rain, and had 
changed into dry socks and a pair of nice warm 
electro-waterproof riding breeches which Nicky 
lent me from his pack to replace my soaking wet 
khaki ones. Then I borrowed a boat and we set 
out in the rain to cast Tink. It seemed strange 
to be casting and catching bass in a driving rain, 
clad in nothing but wool outing shirt and riding 
breeches and yet not getting wet, but I took twc 
bass and a pickerel on the new Shannon red fly 
with twin spinner and pork rind minnow in that 
rain. This lure is the old red Bing fly, minus the 
swivel and spinner, but quite as effective, and was 
a new one to the bass of Tink, for they struck 
savagely at it and I had great fun until Dwight 
got hold of my rod, and, with his first swipe cast 
off the Shannon into the far middle distance of 
the broad bosom of old Tink, where it sank never 
to rise again. However, we had plenty to eat 
for breakfast, and so back to camp. It was now 
dark and each man to his grub pile. It was still 
pouring. I set up my little Stopple grate, split 
up a lot of dead blackjack oak and made a hatful 
of dead white pine shavings. Then two potatoes 
diced and put into the growler; some prunes in 
the deep dish; and a part of the steak in the fry 



74 CAMPING OUT 

pan and I was ready for supper. The fire flared 
up, and, as I sat comfortably on the berth, things 
began to simmer and hum. 

Meanwhile Dwight and Nicky pulled off a sketch. 
Both are fussy; Nicky good-humoured but obsti- 
nate, Dwight as sot in his ways as any old crab 
of the woods. They had a tarp 10x13 feet and the 
ground sloped sharply down to the lake. If they 
set it up fronting the lake both would roll out 
sideways; if they set it up endwise to the lake 
one would have to sleep with his head close to 
the other's feet; if side by side the tarp would 
not be wide enough yet permit some of it under- 
neath for a ground cloth. And so the argument 
went on and on, while the Old Scout hehawed up 
his sleeve. What a cinch not to have to cook 
for anybody! Presently my spuds were ready to 
cream and I set them off and put on a dish for 
tea water, while the community tarp still remained 
a shapeless thing on the ground, the rain came 
down endlessly, and the argument ditto. 

A pinch of tea leaves; some evaporated cream 
and a bit of butter in the spuds, and I set out my 
supper on the stretcher bed while the candle lan- 
tern swung overhead. Steak, tea, creamed pota- 
toes, stewed prunes — not bad for a retiring meal ! 
Finally their tarp was up and Dwight proceeded 




THE STRETCHER BED TENT WITH MOSQUITO BAR CANOPY 




THE SAME, SHOWING STRETCHER BED AND POLE FRAME 



A LONE HIKE FOR BASS 75 

to build a fire in the rain. Nicky came shamelessly 
over to my fire with a steak on a forked stick, 
singed it a little and then flew at it with a growling 
noise redolent of primeval savagery, alternating 
an occasional bite at his rye bread with another 
worry at the steak. Dwight eventually got a fire 
going and burnt up some perfectly good patent 
soup. The Old Scout made up his packsack into 
its sleeping bag shape and turned in. 

Bliss! Never have I slept more comfortably. 
With the wrangle of how to arrange the sleeping 
rigs slowly growing fainter and fainter in my 
ears, I drifted away, to dream of bass, and when 
I awoke it was grey dawn and — cold! This was 
ridiculous, merely a cold night in June, certainly 
not below 40 degrees, and that bag is good down 
to freezing. I recalled the complaint that stretcher 
beds were cold, but with a wool mattress under- 
neath nearly an inch thick it hardly seemed that 
I would be bothered from that source. Yet such it 
was, for my body soon told me so. I wanted to 
turn over, and, feeling my under side, was sur- 
prised to find the mattress cold to the hand while 
the top side was warm and woolly. This deponent 
is no man to endure discomfort if it can be rem- 
edied, and in a few minutes I had slipped on my 
hunting boots and went out looking for a young 



76 CAMPING OUT 

white pine. Three husky branches off one of these 
supplied plenty of browse to fill the bottom of the 
stretcher bed an inch thick, and on this went back 
the sleeping bag and I turned in again. Fine! 
I could feel that side warming up right away, and 
presently was asleep again. When I next awoke 
the sun had been shining for hours and Nicky had 
snitched the boat and was off somewhere cast- 
ing. 

I made me a beautiful corn bread cake in the 
baker, fried a bass, boiled some coffee in the 
growler and sliced up another spud to fry in 
the left-over bacon grease. A fine, wholesome 
breakfast, with no patent preservatives attached. 

Nicky got back, having almost caught a bass, 
and they set to work to make a regular camp. 
Dwight is an experienced hiker, and Nick has the 
Plattsburg dope down fine, so they soon had two 
rock fireplaces built and had each arranged their 
respective ends of the tarp into a well-ordered 
camp. Dwight 's idea of each man being independ- 
ent now showed out its true excellence. Instead 
of all hands being tied down to any special regime 
and all having to be present at meal time, each 
could choose his own time to eat and play. We 
ate when we chose, fished when we chose, or fussed 
about camp at will. For Tink bass fishing, the 



A LONE HIKE FOR BASS 77 

best sclieme is to get out at dawn, with just a 
cup of coffee and a bit of cold corn bread inside, 
and make about two complete turns of the lake 
shore. By that time you will have gotten your 
bass for breakfast and they will have stopped 
biting for it will be nine o'clock and the sun high 
in the heavens. Then get a regular breakfast; 
bake biscuits or cake at your leisure and make a 
good meal of it, like the French dejeuner, served 
about half past ten or eleven. Then wash up, slick 
up the camp, sun the bedding, loaf around and 
smoke, go on a hike or do anything your fancy 
dictates until about four. Then make a big mul- 
ligan of steak chunks, rice, a potato, an onion, 
some macaroni, and let her cook for an hour. This, 
with a stew of prunes and apricots, a dish of tea, 
and some warmed-up corn bread, the half left 
from your baker in the morning (for it takes two 
men to get away with a whole batch in the baker) 
and you are fed full, dishes washed and a pipe 
smoked before six. By that time the sun and wind 
are going down and conditions are right for fishing 
again. You put out in the boat and cast the lily 
pads over the placid waters, glowing like bur- 
nished gold in the setting sun. Then comes the 
sunset, the wonderful June afterglow, with rose 
and purple reflections on the waters and splashes 



78 CAMPING OUT 

of rising bass and pickerel along the dark cat- 
tails — oh, boy! but that's the cream of bass fish- 
ing ! Then home, and to bed by candle light. This 
is the schedule I prefer, and as I had no one but 
myself to cook for and there was no three-meal-a- 
day man to cater to, life was sweet and easeful. 

Nicky preferred to swim in the lake most of the 
day, after which he would come out and squat 
in his end of their tent, cooking ''in the alto- 
gether," as the French say, and he ate when the 
fire would let him, which was any old time, as he 
was too lazy to rustle much wood. Dwight's pet 
pastime was fussing with this, that and the other 
detail of camp outfit ; everything he had was more 
or less stunty, each a patent contrivance, as cute 
as a wooden nutmeg and mostly devised out of 
his own fertile brain. 

One thing he learnt from me, and that is that a 
few good wholesome staples, plus a little knowl- 
edge of bread making and general cookery, are 
lighter and better in the end than a whole kit full 
of add-hot-water-and-serve prepared foods. His 
outfit with a week's grub weighed 26 pounds ; mine 
32 pounds. For staples I carried 1^ pounds of 
flour, % pound of rice, i/^ pound of macaroni, a 
quart of potatoes ' ' as is, ' ' three onions, 3/2 pound 
of prunes, 14 pound of apricots, 2 pounds sugar. 



A LONE HIKE FOR BASS 79 

y^ pound dried codfish, % pound corn meal, four 
eggs, 1/4 pound lard, a can of evaporated cream, 
y^ pound butter, and the meats, coffee, tea, salt, 
etc., mentioned before. I had enough for a week, 
and with the fish that are to be had from Tink 
could make it last ten days. 

As to mosquitoes, the way I solved it for this 
outfit was simply a square of mosquito netting 60 
inches on a side. This was secured to a string 
in the middle and hoisted over my head by said 
string, run over the ridge rope and belayed when 
comfortably high enough. To keep it from sag- 
ging in too close to my face I made a ring of 
willow withe and tied it in a foot below the central 
tie of the mosquito bar. This outfit was light and 
eflicient; it had plenty of drapery to fall well out 
over your shoulders and was not in the way of the 
fire, as a scrim front sewed in would be. 

Since using this one-man hiking outfit, I have 
added a detachable piece of end tenting to secure 
with snap buttons on the end of the tent on which 
the wind is blowing. The outfit seems ideal for 
a single elderly woodsman who wants his comforts 
and does not want to make a pack mule of himself 
on the trail. 



CHAPTER IV 



CANOE VOYAGEURING 



Of all forms of outdoor travel the most pleas- 
urable and the easiest to tackle for the tyro is 
canoe voyageuring. Back-packing requires a high 
degree of organisation, of making the wilderness 
supply one's comforts, of carrying the essentials 
and them only. Horse packing requires a consid- 
erable knowledge of horsemanship, even for the 
beginner, and a good deal of fatiguing training of 
special muscles. Dog and sledge require even 
more experience and specialisation. But for the 
outdoorsman who has passed the first novitiate of 
learning plain camping and camp cookery, who has 
practised with rod and gun until he can depend 
on himself to bring home the meat in a gamey 
country, the first spreading of his wings, so to 
speak, will be in a canoe. Constant and delight- 
ful change of scenery ; continuous mild excitement ;, 
never-ending incident of the watery trail; new 
adventures hourly with fish, fur or feather, — these 
will be his on a minimum of fatigue and with the 
fewest chances of making irreparable mistakes. 

80 



CANOE VOYAGEURING 81 

To wield the paddle, now on this side and now 
on that, hour after hour, while the canoe rushes 
down a swift river, with bends, turns, down trees, 
rock and rapids in unending succession, while at 
each bend the bow man lays down paddle to pick 
up shotgun on the qui vive for game ; to pitch your 
nightly camp on some likely spot overlooking the 
rushing river, tired yet comfortably tired, not 
fatigued to the point of exasperation ; to have the 
senses delighted by vista after vista of shimmer- 
ing waters, overhung with giant forest growth 
throughout the day's paddle; to float with idle 
stroke on placid lakes, with every distant island, 
every promontory of the shore line, every moun- 
tain of the encircling hills a picture for the eye; 
to back-paddle, push and veer with gasping ex- 
citement as you rush downstream, ever down- 
stream, through the white waters; to cut and 
scheme your way through tangles of treetops and 
alders in some bend where a huge monarch has 
fallen athwart your path — all these are in the 
day 's run on any canoe trip, down any wild stream 
worth canoeing. And, to them are added the con- 
stant glimpses of wild life, as birds cross the 
stream overhead, wild ducks rise from the pools 
ahead of you, herons fly off from some backwater 
pond, squirrels ^cold at you from the forest depths, 



82 CAMPING OUT 

the shy deer vanish from their feeding or drinking 
at the water's edge, and telltale tracks of mink and 
'coon tell you who are your nocturnal neighbours 
along the stream side. 

This chapter will endeavour to make smooth the 
canoeist's voyage, written out of reminiscences of 
many hundred miles of such canoeing, both on in- 
land lakes and rivers, and down salt water estu- 
aries under sail in the decked sailing canoes that 
take the place of the open canoe in rough waters. 

To begin with the selection and management of 
a canoe. Some prefer the 16- or 17-foot because 
of its greater ease of turning and handling in 
tight places ; others swear by the 18-foot because 
of its lesser draught for the same load and its 
greater speed on the same paddle power. Some 
like the inch keel, owing to the greater staunch- 
ness that it gives to the canoe frame and the pro- 
tection to the bottom that it affords from scraping 
rocks and sunken tree trunks; others prefer the 
keelless, because of its lesser draught and the ease 
of turning and handling such a canoe ; while still 
others compromise on a flat maple strip for a keel, 
protecting the bottom against scraping and at the 
same time adding staunchness. Of the three I 
personally prefer the 16-foot canoe with an inch 
keel. My own canoe is of that length, with 33- 




THE REST STK'K, A\D ITS U^E ON I'OKTAt.K 




SHOULDERING THE PETERBOROUGH WOODEN CANOE 



CANOE VOYAGEURING 83 

inch beam ; depth amidships of 12 inches ; depths, 
bow and stern, 24 inches; and width of the com- 
paratively flat-bottom before the turn of the bilge 
begins, 24 inches. I want you to get the signifi- 
cance of that last dimension. The reason why 
many canoes are so tipply that one has to part 
one 's hair in the middle when paddling them is be- 
cause they have not the flat bottom so essential 
for stability. They lack what sailors call bilge; 
they are too like a barrel in cross section and turn 
and roll as easily as a barrel in consequence. This 
is the reason why all canoes built with barrel 
hoops for ribs are so capsizy and unsafe. The 
flat bottom, on the contrary, gives her stability so 
that she stands up staunchly under sail and it 
takes more than a good deal of leaning by both 
bow and stern man together to make her go over. 
And you will get many a joggle and throw, from 
passing at full speed willy-nilly under tree 
branches and trunks; many a hurl bodily against 
the bushes at the stream side, when a tipply canoe 
will most likely upset then and there, because of 
the efforts of her crew to get out of trouble and 
protect their faces against stubs and the like — 
it's all in every day's run! So, see that she has 
at least 20 inches of comparatively flat bottom 
before the round turn of the bilge begins. As to 



84 CAMPING OUT 

keel, my canoe has had at least a thousand tree 
trunks scrape along under her bottom, where she 
was either hauled over a down tree or urged and 
pushed over a submerged one, yet you cannot find 
a patch on her bottom; most of the latter are on 
the turn of the bilge where snags, rocks ''an' 
sich" have each and all had their little bite. My 
boy's canoe, however, which has no keel, has a 
number of beautiful patches, 18 inches long, some 
of them, for the most part inflicted where the keel 
ought to have been. And every time we drag her 
loaded over a down tree we hold our breaths lest 
she "hogs back" or breaks in two ! If a flat maple 
keel is put on, you must guard against leaks 
through the canvas by bedding it solid in canoe 
glue, with brass screws or rivets through into the 
ribs, sunk flush with the bottom. So put on, the 
keel will never leak and it is a good thing to do 
with your keelless canoe if you are much troubled 
with rents from touching bottom. About %-inch 
hard maple, 2i/^ to 3 inches wide, makes a good 
keel of this kind. 

You can buy these canvas canoes at all prices 
from $20 for a fairly well built one up to $60 for 
extra staunch models with reinforced gunwales 
and superior construction throughout. The pop- 
ular Guide's Models run around $30 for both 16- 



CANOE VOYAGEURING 85 

and 18-foot sizes. The wooden Peterborough 
canoes, essential in the rough rocky streams of the 
Hudson's Bay country, weigh more and cost $60 
to $80, but will stand much harder usage. The 
canvas canoes weigh from 40 to 70 pounds. Of 
the decked wooden sailing canoes for open waters 
the cheapest cost about $100 with centreboard and 
rudder. The rig is extra, or you can sew up a 
set of sails yourself. If you expect to canoe much 
on big lakes or the big salt water bays of the At- 
lantic Coast, they are the best canoe. The decked 
sailing canvas canoes, weighing around 40 pounds, 
such as the Waterat models described by the 
writer in Field and Stream, and the Varmints 
built by a reader from the plans I published of 
the Waterat, cost about $7.50 for materials and 
none are manufactured for sale in the market. 
They make quite as able a canoe in heavy seas as 
the wooden ones, and, when upset and awash, will 
bear up their crew easily. 

In selecting paddles, I prefer a heavy maple 
paddle for the stern man and a light spruce one 
for the bow. The maple one should be of 28-inch 
blade, 6I/2 inches wide and copper shod, and of 
length for the average man of five feet. The bow 
paddle should be of the same length, 26-inch blade, 
5^ inches wide. The choice of length depends 



86 CAMPING OUT 

upon your individual height. A six-foot man 
would do best with a 5i/^-foot paddle. Other ad- 
visable purchases would be lee boards and a sail 
for home cruising where there is much open water, 
but never take the sail unless you are to have 
plenty of use for it, as it is a terrible nuisance on 
portage and in stowing, and never take it in the 
late fall, for then the winds are too violent to use 
it without great danger of upset, which is gener- 
ally a drowning matter even for the best swim- 
mers, for the water is then cold enough to numb 
you quickly. 

Having purchased the canoe, the next step is to 
learn how to handle her. The classic beginner's 
mistake is reaching too far ahead for his water, 
making his arms do the work instead of his body. 
You have no leverage when you dip in too far 
ahead; put in your strength as your left wrist 
passes your left hip while your right hand is 
sweeping the top of the paddle forward. This 
puts your shoulder and body into it — even your 
feet have to have a brace, for in paddling the 
whole body works, including the Unexercised Mid- 
dle Third which the doctors preach about so much. 
This work of the whole body and not any par- 
ticular part is why canoeing is less fatiguing than 
other forms of wilderness travel ; instead of a few 



CAXOE VOYAGEURIXG 87 

muscles being worked until the fatigue poisons 
from them permeate the whole body, all the mus- 
cles of the body are called into jAaj and each one 
is given just enough to do to make you well tired 
at the end of the day, not sick and headachy wath 
exhaustion. 

Balance of the canoe has a great deal to do with 
the art of paddling. If alone, do not sit on the 
rear seat, but rather kneel in the bottom ahead 
of the rear thwart, w4th your buttocks resting 
against the thwart. In this position you will find 
that you can paddle continuously on one side with- 
out turning the canoe off her course, merely rec- 
tifying yourself a trifle by a little flip of the paddle 
at the end of each stroke. The blade should be 
held at a slight angle from perpendicular to the 
line of the canoe's advance, so as to put a slight 
draw in the stroke, enough to compensate for the 
tendency to turn that paddling on one side wiU 
give. You will find that if sitting alone in the 
rear seat, no amount of draw to the paddle will 
compensate sufficiently and you will have to steer 
her at the end of each stroke which loses you 
speed and wastes strength. Sitting in front of 
the rear thwart will rectify this for you; if not 
enough, move a little of the duffle further forward. 
If alone in a head wind it sometimes pays to pad- 



88 CAMPING OUT 

die in the bow seat, letting the wind trail out the 
body of the canoe astern and keeping her on her 
course. 

With two men in the canoe the bow man is cap- 
tain in the north country where there are many 
rocks to be avoided, but elsewhere general usage 
has the stern man for captain. Team work must 
be learnt at once and a number of new strokes 
will come into play. The bow man has two new 
ones to learn, the pulling and the shoving stroke. 
Suppose you want to drag the bow over towards 
the paddle side quickly, while the stern man is 
swinging her stern. Then dip in far from the 
canoe with blade at about a 45-degree angle and 
pull the paddle towards you while making your 
stroke. The effect is to drag the canoe bodily in 
the direction of the paddle and helps the stern 
man materially in his manoeuvre. The opposite, 
the shoving stroke, is with the paddle close to the 
canoe, again at 45 degrees, and sweeping outwards 
as well as backwards during the stroke, even using 
the gunwale of the canoe as fulcrum (if not over- 
done so as to endanger breaking the paddle). 

In swift water full of rocks and snags the prin- 
ciple to aim at is to keep the canoe going slower 
than the water is flowing. If the water flows faster 
it will always carry the bow of the canoe away 



CANOE VOYAGEURING 89 

from rocks, as the current will lift it bodily away 
from the rock due to the cushion of water piled 
up on the latter. Now, if the stern man swings the 
stern clear, all will be well, and here he must learn 
a new stroke, for, as the water is going faster than 
the canoe, he must know how to back paddle, both 
straight and with the pull and push strokes. To 
back paddle on the side opposite to the rock is to 
invite disaster, for the current will simply swing 
the stern around broadside to the rock and carry 
you down on it. The action wanted is a vigorous 
shove back stroke on the same side as the rock, 
thus making the current bear the stern away from 
the rock. As the bow is already clear, either from 
the sweep of the current or the bow man's efforts, 
depending upon the relative speed of canoe and 
water, it follows that the whole boat will pass in 
safety. 

I know that this viewpoint is disagreed with 
by many experienced canoeists who prefer to keep 
the canoe always faster than the water, but in 
both steerage way is had by the paddles, and the 
slower method is the safer. 

Certain general principles should be kept in 
mind in all waters. Keep out of the main strength 
of the current all you can, is the first one. Cut 
across all bends, and here is where the bow man's 



90 CAMPING OUT 

hardest work comes. He must always strive to 
anticipate the river. It tends to swing the canoe 
into the main eddies, and your aim is to keep out of 
them. As you bear swiftly down upon a bend, the 
bow man first shoves the bow towards the shoals 
across from the bend, while the stem man remains 
quiescent, and, as soon as he gets her aimed right, 
the stern man puts in his strength and shoots her 
ahead across the flat in the still water. He should 
not paddle hard before this, as he will only drive 
the canoe into the bend, when the current will 
slam her against the undergrowth on the bank, 
making the bow man's work of extricating her 
doubly difficult. The way to avoid hard labour 
and sidetrack that dog-tired feeling at night is to 
keep out of the full current, and it makes for 
added speed, too, as the time lost by the other 
fellows in extricating themselves from trouble is 
far more than what they gain by a little added 
speed in rushing down into the bends and — trou- 
ble! 

In shallow waters, where the river seems spread 
all over the map, just the opposite tactics are 
necessary. Find the channel and stick to it, merely 
cutting off the bends as closely as possible, but 
going where the deeper waters are. 

Presently a down tree hoves in sight, and the 



CANOE VOYAGEURING 91 

crew is in for more team work. An instant deci- 
sion is necessary as to which end of it is nego- 
tiable and, right or wrong, the stern man has the 
say, as something must be done at once and you 
do not want the river to take command and sweep 
you down on the tree. Suppose the bow man finds 
that by a little axe work a way can be wormed 
through the branches at the top end. He chops 
away enough and you pull yourselves through. 
If ''no go," back the canoe out, and here comes 
in a new team stroke, one that will take you across 
the river without going either up or down. The 
canoe is first gotten at an angle of about 45 de- 
grees to the current, and the man at the upstream 
end then paddles hard upstream on the side oppo- 
site the current. The man at the other end pad- 
dles lightly against him, just enough to hold the 
canoe in position. The river will then breast her 
across and you soon find yourselves at the root 
end of the tree. If " no go " here, cross the stream 
again until in mid-stream at a likely spot to haul 
over the tree trunk, and still paddling against each 
other, let her drift gently alongside the trunk, 
broadside to the current. It will pin her firmly 
against the trunk, but will not upset her. Get out 
the heaviest duffle packs and put them on the trunk. 
Stern man then gets in and backs her stem out 



92 CAMPING OUT 

perpendicular to the trunk, while the bow man 
lifts her bow out on the trunk. Stern man then 
crawls out, and, with one of them on each side 
of the canoe, she is hauled over the trunk. The 
size of the latter doesn't matter, a foothold can 
be maintained on the veriest sapling if you have 
your hands on the gunwale of the canoe. A high 
lift over a trunk too low to get the canoe under, 
generally requires all the duffle out on the bank 
and a carry made around, or else the canoe, empty, 
is snaked up on the trunk and shot over the other 
side. 

In general, the stern man should never back 
paddle, as that uses up the strength of both men 
and takes all the steerage way out of the canoe, 
leaving her at the mercy of the river. The bow 
man should be keen enough to look ahead and an- 
ticipate the river, so as to get his end around 
without requiring the stern man to assist by back 
paddling. So shall you reach a camp site about 
4 p. M. still in good fettle, so as to enjoy making 
a new camp under new conditions. 

As to choice of a river, never go down one with 
farms and towns on its banks. It's hardly worth 
the candle when there are so many good ones 
flowing through the real wilderness which can be 
reached with a little carfare. Simply stick a shin- 



CANOE VOYAGEURING 93 

plaster on the canoe and turn her over to the ex- 
press companies to some remote railroad shack 
on or near the river. She will be waiting for you 
when you debouch from the train, and you will 
have no trouble getting her over to the river if 
you are a canoeist. I've seldom been disappointed 
in my river, provided only that she was wild. If 
there are habitations on the banks, look out! Stick 
to the hard and fast rule of never drinking the 
river water, camp at springs or boil the water, 
or your trip may have an aftermath of every one 
sick and some one down with typhoid, as once 
happened to me. To locate springs, look out for 
small rills or washed gravel spots on the banks 
as you go along. There are plenty of springs 
along every stream side (except in sandy, piney 
country where they are a rarity) if you keep an 
eye peeled for signs of one. Islands you should 
avoid for the lack of springs on them; it takes 
quite an island to develop a spring. 

And don't have a schedule. I've had two trips 
spoiled by schedules to which some of the party 
insisted in living up to like a time table. When 
you get a likely spot stick around a day or so 
and fish or hunt. You might travel farther and 
fare worse, besides passing forever a chance for 
adventure and discovery of a place that you will 



94 CAMPING OUT 

come back to again and again as the years go 
by. If it hadn't been for our old darky, Myles, 
we would have passed Wagram, N. C, and its 
wonderful quail shooting without ever knowing it ; 
it has been a Mecca for us ever since. Suppress 
the fellow with that restless get-somewhere-else 
spirit and don't let it get hold of you — 's my ad- 
vice! 

In lake canoeing, particularly a chain of lakes 
such as one finds in Wisconsin, Minnesota and 
northern New York, a whole set of new canoeing 
conditions occur. We have the portage and the 
traverse, the latter unknown to river canoeing. 
The traverse, i. e., going across a mde body of 
water from one point to the next or crossing the 
lake itself, involves judgment as to gauging the 
weather, and, if a squall hits you, team work in 
the crew to keep her going. Sometimes it is braver 
to face the crowd with an emphatic ''No!" than 
to start something that you cannot finish (and 
the same applies to running rapids that better men 
than you have portaged around). It is better to 
make a double traverse with lightly loaded canoe 
than a single one with heavy, logy canoe and get 
swamped in mid-lake. The most nervous business 
of the kind I was ever in was as stern man in a 
16-foot canoe with three persons in it besides all 



CANOE VOYAGEURING 95 

our duffle, and a heavy whitecapped November sea 
on. It was sure drowning for us all if she foun- 
dered, so I just whistled a little tune and rolled 
up her gunwale to each and every whitecap with 
a little flip of my body ; and in time we got across, 
much to the astonishment of some fishermen, who 
did not dream that any craft would be abroad on 
the waters in such weather. In running rapids 
you want everything lashed fast, and in case of 
disaster stick to the canoe so that eddies will not 
pull you under. It is not far to shore, and you 
will soon be swept into a backwater. In travers- 
ing, on the other hand, you want everything free 
except the paddles, which should be tied to the 
canoe with about eight feet of strong twine each. 
If swamped or upset, get everything out of her 
at once and with one at bow and the other at stern 
kick her ashore. She will drift there in time of 
her own accord, especially in a strong wind. She 
will bear up two in the water, and one can even 
lie down in the water inside the canoe and rest. 
If alone and you find yourself getting numb with 
cold, crawl inside and lie do^vn in her awash. A 
mere touch of your body on her bottom suffices to 
bear you up, and you can keep exercising by dash- 
ing out water with your hands. It will not do 
much good except to keep you warm if there is a 



96 CAMPING OUT 

sea on, but if reasonably calm you can empty her 
that way. If quite calm you can empty her alone 
by either rocking or "shoving" the water out. 
Swim 'round astern, and, grasping the high part 
of the stern rock her from side to side, allowing 
the momentum of the water to slop it out over 
either gunwale. ' ' Shoving ' ' it out consists in pull- 
ing the canoe sharply towards you, at the same 
time lifting the stern, when a rush of water pours 
out over the bow, and levelling her before it has 
time to flow back. Then, shoving the canoe sharp- 
ly away from you and depressing the stern has 
the effect of causing the water to pour out over 
the stern, and, in time you will get her about half 
empty, when it will be safe to attempt to climb 
inside over the stern. I have done all three meth- 
ods of bailing out a swamped canoe and would 
consider the methods feasible for a medium 
strength man in anything from a flat calm to a 
considerable ripple, but not in seas strong enough 
to bear white caps. Two men in the water can 
empty a canoe in any sea, treading water while 
they lift her sidewise, finally inverting the canoe 
in the air over their heads and letting her come 
down empty, after which, by jumping simultane- 
ously in at bow and stern on opposite sides so as 
to balance her, they can get in. The paddles, be- 



CANOE VOYAGEURING 97 

ing tied to the thwarts by thoags, will be floating 
alongside, and all floatable duffle can then be re- 
covered. 

Many a weary mile of lake paddling can be ob- 
viated by carrying a light tarp which can be rigged 
on two spruce spars cut in the forest. The mast, 
however, should be securely stepped, and so, to 
avoid upsets from the mast going adrift at a 
critical moment it is well to have a good step 
screwed to the ribs of the canoe just aft of the 
bow seat. By lashing the spruce spar to the seat 
rail with its foot in the step you have a good 
strong rig, and the other spar as a sprit holds out 
the upper outer corner of the tarp. Main sheet 
is tied to the lower outer corner of the tarp, and 
you have a good sail before the wind and can 
even tack and reach after a fashion, though she 
will make a great deal of leeway. 

Between lakes and around bad rapids you will 
have to portage. Look for a blaze, or tin can 
or other signs of a landing place marking the end 
of the portage trail. If it seems much used, it is 
a sign that better men than you have preferred 
portaging to shooting the rapids and you are in 
for a portage. Here is where light loading counts, 
for if you have to double trip it it means six 
times the walking and time lost. Here's where a 



98 CAMPING OUT 

good packsack rig scintillates, each man with all 
his personal duffle and half the grub in his pack 
and the canoe inverted over the heads of both 
of them. A yoke made of a sweater or Mackinaw 
helps a lot, as it is not so much the canoe load 
as the distress that it causes on shoulder blades 
that counts if you try it raw. If there are three 
in the party, the duffle can be divided between two 
of them and the third man will carry the canoe. 
The classic Hudson's Bay method is to first lash 
on the two paddles side by side, tying the handles 
securely on the after thwart and the blades as se- 
curely on the forward thwart with just space 
enough between them to pass your head. If not 
lashed securely they will go adrift when you try 
to turn the thing over your head. Now, grasping 
the canoe by the gunwales, you sling her up and 
over your head (lightweights had better leave 
one end of it on the ground) and then insert your 
head between the paddle blades, letting the latter 
rest on your collar and shoulder bones. Here 
also a sweater or other extra garment tempers 
the weight to the shorn collarbone. Carried this 
way a canoe is no great burden and you can shift 
back and forth along the blades to get the right 
balancing position to let her tip up her bow so 
you can see ahead on the trail. A rest stick about 




CARRYING THE CANOE ON PADDLE BLADES 




AT THE END OF THE PORTAGE UNLASHING THE PADDLES 



CANOE VOYAGEURING 99 

51/^ feet long is useful to carry, supporting the 
canoe for you whenever you want to get out from 
under and rest your shoulders. 

All of which brings us to the important ques- 
tion of weight of outfit. Where there is little or 
no portaging to be done outside of hauling over 
down trees and around dams it is not necessary 
to pare down fine, but on a regular trip with lots 
of portages the brother who insists on taking 
more for his personal comfort than the whole load 
of his partner including his share of the grub,-^: 
well, he is one of those one-time campers, the kind 
you do not go with again. First as to party loads, 
the tent, cooking outfit and grub containers. 
There are a number of light canoe tents made, all 
with the idea of having something that can be 
quickly put up with a few short poles. You should 
not have to allow more than fifteen minutes to 
getting the tent up and three to striking it. Such 
tents are the Hudson's Bay, Hiker's, Canoe, For- 
ester, and the varieties of lean-to tents, too well 
known to need any description here. For a party 
of two or three, my choice has been an open front 
model for spring and fall canoeing because of its 
warmth with an open fire in front, the "perfect 
shelter tent" a lean-to with mosquito-bar side for 
summer, and the "Blizzard" modification of the 



100 CAMPING OUT 

Hudson's Bay for snowy and bitter weather when 
you want a tent stove in the door of the tent. For 
a larger party there is a better tent than any of 
them which I learnt from George Borton, the 
canoeist, and I shall digress here to describe it. 
I have dubbed it the canoe-and-tarp tent. To be- 
gin with, you don't w^ant to spend more than six 
pounds on your canoe trip shelter tentage, and the 
nearer you can get it to Sy^ pounds the better. 
Well, this tent is simply a large tarp about 10x12 
feet, w^eighing six pounds in most modern tent 
fabrics, and when a camp site is selected it is with 
the eye to a level spot with two trees growing on 
it about eight feet apart. To these the canoe is 
first lashed on its side so as to bring the lower 
side about 3 feet above the ground. Over the up- 
per side of the canoe is spread the tarp with ropes 
running around and tying on the lower gunwale 
to make the tarp secure and then the front edges 
of the tarp are guyed out to convenient saplings 
or stakes, with a single eight-foot pole in the cen- 
tre of the front edge of the tarp. Now, as the 
canoe is 33 inches w^ide it follows that the upper 
rear ^dge of this tent is 5 feet 3 inches above the 
ground so that you have in effect a big lean-to 
tent, 10 by 12 feet in area, approximately 8 feet 
high in front and 5 feet at the back — all on six 



CANOE VOYAGEURING 101 

pounds of tentage weight. A party of four or 
five can spread their bedding with ease under this 
shelter, and that is not all, either, for before the 
sleeping bags are unrolled they can stand there 
in rainy weather and get grub in peace with the 
fire just in front of the outer edge of the tarp, and 
an eating table can be set up on stakes, the top 
being a box or paddle blades laid end to end — a 
dozen ways will suggest themselves. Nor is that 
all, either, for the lower side of the canoe gives 
you a long shelf on which can be put all the food- 
bags, small duffle and cooking utensils not in use, 
a handy, dry place for them, right at the chef's 
elbow. We used this type of camp on a trip down 
"Wading River in November and it was a great suc- 
cess. The pictures will give you a better idea than 
my words how the canoe-tarp tent looks when set 
up. For insects the individual head net for sleep- 
ing is best for this kind of tent. 

For cooking outfit there is no need to go beyond 
aluminum in any of the well-known kits. While 
tin will do all right for eating plates and mixing 
pans, for the fire you want aluminum because of 
its great conductivity of heat, which prevents a 
hot spot localising and scorching the edibles. That 
and its lightness and durability. For drinking 
cups, enamel is the thing, as it will not burn your 



102 CAMPING OUT 

lip as tin and aluminum will surely do. Your 
mouth can stand (and craves) more heat than 
your lips can bear when pressed on raw metal. 
But do not go on a trip without a wire grate of 
some kind. The new one with metal around three 
sides to keep in the heat and keep the wind from 
blowing the heat and smoke out from under the 
sides and around the campers seems a boon, for 
most canoe camps are near waterside, generally 
on a windy point to avoid mosquitoes. 

For carrying the grub the side-opening grub 
bags which roll up the lips around maple rods are 
good, and will float and keep things dry in spray, 
upset, etc. Inside them go the parafined muslin 
food bags, 9 by 8 inches diameter and 12 by 8 
inches diameter. The grub bags are 22x8 inches 
diameter and will hold about 20 pounds of grub 
each. Another good canoe rig is the tough, thin, 
double-veneer suitcase, with rubber lips to make 
it watertight. It makes a good central package 
in any canoe, and a solid back to your pack if same 
is carried in a leather harness on portage. In 
camp the case is opened out and inverted on four 
stakes, making a table about 22 by 28 inches, and 
inside it are carried the cooking pots and small 
food containers when travelling. 

As most canoe camp sites are beside the water, 



CANOE VOYAGEURING 103 

one has to go ready for insects, mosquitoes, piin- 
kies and black flies. So bring along two head nets 
to wear about camp (one of them usually getting 
torn beyond recall before the trip is half over). 
Also be sure that a punkie bar made of thin lawn 
muslin is sewed to the tent all round, with a gen- 
erous drop curtain effect to take care of inequali- 
ties in the ground, and in the canoe-and-tarp tent 
bring along your individual punkie bar and rig it 
over your sleeping bag on withes bent over the 
bag like an inverted U. 



CHAPTER V 

WE DISCOVER THE ADIRONDACKS 

It is a curious fact that the Old Forge-Saranac 
trip, well known and ancient as it is, has not been 
written of in the outdoor press in years. Many a 
time have I pored over it in maps, but the sight 
of a well-defined steamboat route running the 
whole length of the Fulton Chain and through all 
the principal lakes of the trip, made me pass it 
up whenever a canoe trip through the famous old 
route was proposed. I pictured a chain of Lake 
Hopatcongs, with a summer cottage on every 
available point, and nowhere where your honest 
vagabond camper could lay his head without hav- 
ing the owner's dogs set on him. It just couldn't 
be uncivilised enough and yet have all those steam- 
boat lines in evidence, for steamers mean people 
to ride in them, and that argues a crowded lake. 

As a matter of fact, the country is too big to be 
mindful of a puffy launch or two masquerading 
as a steamboat line, and, as we came to learn later, 
those boats looked like lone ants crawling over the 

104 



WE DISCOVER ADIRONDACKS 105 

bosom of tlie waters when seen from the surround- 
ing mountain tops. 

So we decided to try it, and the party was soon 
made up ; Joan of Arc the Second in the bow of 
the canoe, Ye Olde Scoutte at stern paddle and the 
Doctor amidships. There was a thousand-to-one 
chance of our picking up Nicky somewhere in the 
Adirondacks a week later, and about the same 
time the Doc's brother, Professor Andrews, and 
Arthur Loesser, the famous pianist, were to join 
us at the Saranac end of the trip. The route lay 
about 120 canoe miles in a general northeasterly 
direction across the Adirondacks, with sixteen 
lakes, two rivers, and some thirteen miles of por- 
tages making up its tortuous length. Once at 
Saranac you could blossom out in a dozen direc- 
tions and do a dozen delightful things. 

To provide a canoe the simplest scheme is just 
to put a shin plaster on your own and let the ex- 
press companies deliver it at Old Forge or 
Raquette Lake, whichever you elect to start from. 
The cost for mine from Allenhurst, N. J., to Old 
Forge, N. Y., was $3.60. Delivery time two days. 
Returning it from Saranac Lake, $4.95. A canoe 
can be hired at $5 a week from Frank Colbath in 
Saranac Lake, or from the railroad agent at Old 
Forge. As to direction, the start at the Old Forge 



106 CAMPING OUT 

end is generally best, for the prevailing wind in 
the Adirondacks in summer is southwest, so that 
you have it most of the time at your back, whereas 
in the reverse direction, except in a rare spell of 
northwest weather, you would have to fight against 
it continually. 

The trip began, as most good trips do, with a 
Pullman car, where sportsmen and their duffle are 
most decidedly not looked down on as gipsies (as 
they always are in the plebeian day coach), and, 
before we had hardly got through our gossip over 
a moccasin at which the Olde Scoutte was stitch- 
ing interminably, the porter had the berths made 
up and we turned in for an early start next morn- 
ing. Our car was shunted off at Fulton Chain 
Junction about three in the morning, but it was 
five 'clock before the porter poked us up for the 
short run in a stub-end train to Old Forge. Ar- 
rived there we hunted up a hotel, according to 
programme, had breakfast and changed from 
*'cits" into hunting clothes. In passing it is well 
to remark that the expense of this — 75 cents for 
breakfast and a dollar for a room for ten minutes' 
use — could just as well be cut out by getting the 
canoes at once and pushing on a mile or so down 
the lake, where a change can be made, grub cooked 
and the suitcases containing your city clothes 




THE TENT COT AND HANDY TENT 




CAXUE AM) DUFFLE IN ONE CARRY 



WE DISCOVER ADIRONDACKS 107 

brought back to the station and expressed to Sara- 
nac Lake. 

However, buying our fresh meat and loading the 
canoe, which was lying alongside the lake bulk- 
head awaiting us, we were soon under way. 

First and Second lakes are fairly uninhabited, 
with but few camps along the shores, and many a 
nice camp site I spied out — a useful bit of infor- 
mation for the fellow coming the other way who 
wants to make his final camp within easy striking 
distance of the railroad station. 

Third Lake was pretty crowded, and Fourth 
Lake awful — a mere summer boarding place, with 
strings of cottages all along its shores. My 
scheme for spending a few days here fishing went 
a-glimmer, but our report cards speak of good 
fishing in this lake. I cast a number of likely 
spots without result and am inclined to the view 
that still fishing or trolling a whole day at a sit- 
ting, is needed to produce a mess of bass. 

Fifth Lake is a mere pond, reached by a tortu- 
ous channel thickly lined with summer cottages 
and hotels, and here your first carry begins. A 
boy, with wheels, lives up the road a bit, in a grey 
wooden house, and his wheels are to hire for 25 
cents, so, as the carry is but half a mile along a 
country road, we hired the wheels and were soon 



108 CAMPING OUT 

in Sixth Lake. Here is a fine spring, across the 
dam in a field back of a barn, and we had our noon 
luncheon of cheese, rye bread, wurst and fresh 
fruit before pushing on. Sixth Lake is small and 
uninteresting, but the permanent camps begin to 
thin out, which lends a measure of encouragement 
to the real woodsman. It leads in half an hour 's 
paddling direct to Seventh Lake, a rather promis- 
ing bit of water, several miles long, with very few 
camps on it and any number of places to pitch 
your tent and have all the wilderness for your 
own. The strong southwest wind was at our backs, 
and the lake had quite a chop on it, but our Morris 
was a stanch craft, for all her heavy load of three 
people and their duffle, so that her five inches of 
freeboard proved ample. I was for stopping and 
making camp, but Joan would have none of it ; the 
outdoor fever was in her blood, her cheeks bloomed 
under their tan, her eyes sparkled, and the zest of 
adventure had laid its fascinating spell on her. 
The delightful Doc was also keen for more adven- 
turing, and so we shot across Seventh Lake, with 
a fine young thunderstorm brewing. At its upper 
end is a vast swamp, which in the Adirondacks 
means, not a green marsh, but a deadwater full of 
stumps and dead trees, weird, gaunt and pictur- 
esque to look upon. Through this we snaked the 



WE DISCOVER ADIRONDACKS 109 

canoe and hit the first real portage, a mile carry 
from Seventh to Eighth Lake, just as the rain 
began. 

This did not halt Joan one second. There was 
a shed handy for shelter, and a pair of wheels to 
hire for a dollar, but she was through with civilisa- 
tion for good ! The trail led off through the bush, 
a narrow beaten path, and so we organised for 
our first carry in the rain. Joan had a cute little 
squaw bag full of her personal effects on her back ; 
a camera and a sketch box draped across either 
shoulder and in her hands she carried the camp 
axe, fishing rods and one dufl9e bag. The Doc 
rigged a pack of his tent and bed roll a la Dwight 
Franklin (the carrying and harness strap being a 
simple length of broad webbing), whilst I swung 
my packsack sleeping bag upon my shoulders, 
weighing, with most of the grub for the party, 35 
pounds. The paddles were lashed securely from 
bow seat to forward thwart brace by the tow line, 
leaving just space for your head in between. They 
must be well lashed so as not to go adrift or you 
will be in for much misery. The canoe weighed 
80 pounds, so that my share of it was about 50. 
The Doc took the remaining 30 on his shoulder, 
resting the stern of the canoe on a pair of socks 
lain flat over the shoulder, and, to even him up, 



110 CAMPING OUT 

I lashed Joan's folding tent cot, a light steel-elm- 
and-canvas affair weighing eleven pounds, in his 
end of the canoe. 

And so we started single tripping it on our first 
portage. As I also had the growler slung around 
one shoulder with four pounds of meat and perish- 
ables in it, my total load was 90 pounds, which was 
nearly too much for a 130-pound man. The Doc 
struck up a cheery chanty, and we were off! So 
were the flies, mosquitoes and punkies, which now 
began to put in evidence. I counted a hundred 
paces and was then glad enough to stop and cut 
what Frank Stick calls a "rest stick." This is a 
great life-saver. Just a stout sapling, five feet six 
inches long, which you carry in your free hand. 
When tired simply stand it up in front of you and 
let it take the weight of the canoe off your shoul- 
ders. 

Joan led the way, breaking trail. I simply fol- 
lowed the heels of her dainty hunting boots, while 
the good Doc steered the canoe free of snags and 
brush. We made Eighth Lake in three laps in a 
pouring thunder shower, and when at last the open 
water showed up, the sun came out, and — ^blessed 
sight — there was the State Conservation Commis- 
sion placard nailed to a tree ! State land at last ! 



WE DISCOVER ADIRONDACKS 111 

The people's playground, free of cottages and in- 
violable forever! I breathed a prayer of thank- 
fulness to the wisdom of Rufus Choate and his 
associates who wrote into the Constitution those 
words that the wild lands of the State shall be for- 
ever kept free of the lumberman's axe and the 
squatter's cabin. Here at last was a lake with 
never a cottage on its shores, wild forest all about, 
and the green clad hills smiling under cloud, and 
sunshine ! For, the curse of the Adirondacks is the 
cottage or permanent "camp." A man clears a 
fine site on some point, puts up his house — and 
kills a quarter of a mile of lake front, for all the 
forest back of him is of no use to the woodsman 
if he has no access to the lake. Another man does 
the same, and soon every available point is taken 
and you have the alternative of pushing on or 
camping on some flat shore with the brush and big 
trees too thick to put up a tent, the insect pests at 
their worst and no spot level enough to make a 
camp site. Such is the whole Fulton Chain with 
the exception of Eighth Lake and possibly Sev- 
enth. Luckily, with a southwest wind one can push 
right through, as the whole distance is but 28 
miles, but with a northwest wind, or, still worse, 
a northeast storm, one would be hard put to it to 



112 CAMPING OUT 

get through the Chain at all. If doing it again I 
would certainly ship the canoe to Eaquette Lake 
and begin the trip there. 

About the centre of Eighth Lake is a small 
island with two fine camp sites on it, and here we 
finally pulled up the canoe for the night's camp. 
The Doc is one of those dear, delicious souls who 
cannot pick up an egg without putting his thumb 
through it, and here he got his name, "The Great 
Soul," which stuck to him throughout the trip. 
The Great Soul was entirely charmed with the 
scenery, and the poetry of the outdoors had per- 
meated his being, so he proceeded to put up his 
tent on one ear, while I unpacked our tarps and 
put up the Lone Hiker's outfit described before in 
these pages. Under the ample spread of the tarp 
of that outfit went, in addition to my stretcher bed, 
Joan's folding cot, and over that a ridge rope with 
yet another tarp, which, when tied down to the 
legs of the bed, made a tent-cot with the two ends 
enclosed in cheese-cloth mosquito bars. 

The Great Soul was strangely quiet. "I'm 
simply lost in awe. Cap, at all the wonderful 
things that have come out of that pack of yours. 
They just couldn't have, you know! Where they 
were all stowed is beyond me! Apparently you 
carried nothing, yet here is a whole encampment. 



WE DISCOVER ADIRONDACKS 113 

two sleeping bags, a cooking outfit, and I know 
not what besides!" 

I grinned modestly and got at the Doc's tent, 
which, as it is nearly ideal for Adirondack camp- 
ing, will deserve particular description. It is 
called by some firms the Handy tent. It is in ef- 
fect a closed tent, one half of a square, walled 
miner's tent, if you can conceive of such a thing 
in your mind's eye. It takes but one pole, covers 
5x7 feet of ground, has walls two feet high and a 
peak six feet high, so you can stand up to dress, 
and weighs seven pounds. Best of all, it is of 
woven canvas with no paraffine, so that the breeze 
sifts through it at night, keeping the air sweet and 
clean, not foul and breathy as it becomes with all 
closed paraffine tents. Once inside for the night 
you close and tightly lace the front, and then, with 
electric flasher, calmly murder each and every 
mosquito, black fly, punkie, squeazlegeaque and 
midge that has accumulated inside, after which 
you will have a uigM of pe^ce 

But, while all these flies were at us, they were 
not overly bad, as yet, for the punkie does not 
come out in force until dusk, when the spruce 
smudge is your only sure protection. I gathered 
a handful of dead balsam twigs and started a 
sassy little fire which soon had a meal of steak, 



114 CAJMPING OUT 

creamed spuds, tea, prunes and baked com bread 
ready to serve. 

The Doc shook his head. "It simply can't be 
done, and it isn't being done !" he said in an aside 
to Joan. "I grant that Cap is serving this meal 
cooked on that handful of match-sticks for fire- 
wood, but it really can't be you know! Up at 
Temagami we use a cord of wood and cook over 
the coals — and it's the only way I've been led to 
understand. ' ' 

However that may be, the meal was eaten with 
all haste, as the punkies were upon us; also the 
black flies, and they soon drove us to bed. The 
Doc retired to his tent, Joan was ushered into her 
cot and I slid blissfully into my stretcher bed and 
sleeping bag. I pulled the mosquito blind down 
and laughed at the buzzing demons outside. Just 
as I was dozing off a fiery itch on my face called 
for a hand-slap out of the bag. Horrors! Pun- 
kies ! Also midges ! Also black flies ! They went 
through that mosquito blind like a tennis net, nor 
did I get a wink of sleep that night. Joan hardly 
fared better, as the punkies and midges found the 
cheese-cloth a simple matter of perseverance to 
penetrate; and the Doc, having put his tent up, 
leaving sundry holes under the sod cloth, soon had 
his abode full of the pests. Fly dopes only served 



WE DISCOVER ADIRONDACKS 115 

as a mire in which to grind the myriads of demons. 
We dozed and slapped through the night and got 
under way early for the Browns' Tract portage 
next morning. 

Once on the lake we were at peace again, but the 
black flies bit us pretty freely on the carry, which 
we double tripped. As we were held up at noon 
by a thunderstorm, it was 2 o 'clock before we made 
way down the backwater for Raquette Lake. Good 
bass water, from all appearances, but we had no 
time to cast it. Raquette is a big fellow, with an 
open six-mile traverse in which I dreaded being 
windbound, but to our delight there was but a 
slight sea on, so Joan and I drove the canoe across 
that six miles with all due diligence. We found 
Sucker Bay a smother of white caps and so waited 
on a little rocky islet for sunset, when the wind 
would probably go down. Joan dozed in the bot- 
tom of the canoe, while the Doc and I got out on 
a huge rock and buried ourselves in the full score 
of ''Till Eulenspiegle. " He is teacher of theory 
and composition at the Institute of Musical Art, 
and he's as full of notes inside as a grain elevator 
is full of wheat. A great card, a learned and witty 
comrade on the trail; and a finer, gentler soul 
never breathed. 

Six 'clock came and no abatement of the wind. 



116 CAMPING OUT 

We spied a bluff with no camp on it, far to the lee- 
ward. Eaquette is one mass of rich men's villas 
and no place for outers such as we, but here was 
evidently the one good chance, so we ran for it 
over a boiling sea and soon were up against the 
wildest coast you ever laid eyes on. The sandy 
bluff rose sheer for forty feet, with great trees 
tumbled prone down its banks, and up these we 
three adventurers swarmed, hauling up the duffle 
with ropes and taking advantage of every twig to 
climb. Peace at last ; a high wind and no insects. 
The forest was so dense that you could scarce 
push a hole in it anywhere, but we selected a pine- 
needly dent on the very brink of the bluff and 
started making camp. In ten minutes the locality 
was a swarming mass of punkies — the fate of him 
who cannot camp on a point! We soon were 
routed and set forth again into the stormy night 
to find a point. It turned out to have a million 
dollar establishment on it, with the nearest hotel 
•xoxir miles across the black, wind-tossed lake, and 
it was raining, so we camped, gladly enough, in 
the rich man's back grounds and got away early, 
thankful that he did not set his dogs upon us. 

A carry across Bluff Point solved the problem 
of how to get around Sucker Bay, and soon we 
were in Outlet Bay and the Eaquette River. It 



WE DISCOVER ADIRONDACKS 117 

was a glorious sunny morning and the river a wild 
scene of beauty. After all too few miles of it we 
reached the carry to Forked Lake. This was easy ; 
a broad road and a pair of wheels got us over in 
one lift, and at the other end was a beauty camp 
site, under huge pines, carpeted with pine needles 
and free from insects. Here we stopped the whole 
afternoon, had a big feed and made a pleasant 
camp. Joan painted her first sketch, the Doc read 
''Till," while I most shamelessly loafed. You 
cannot fish in these waters as they are part of the 
Whitney Preserve, but you are welcome to camp. 
That canoe ride that we took on placid Forked 
Lake at sunset will always remain one of the 
golden hours of the past. The tall mountains 
frowned down upon us on every hand. Pricked 
out in gold against a violet sky, their serrated 
edges rimmed the horizon, while vistas through 
their gaps disclosed yet other peaks far away in 
the promised land to the north. The white- 
throated sparrow lifted his broken-hearted refrain 
to the endless suffering of the North ; the thrushes 
found melodious breath in the sombre forest 
depths, and out on the still waters there was si- 
lence and peace. Only the silent, smoky Red Man 
was lacking to make the picture perfect. 

Our camp at Forked Lake that night was peace- 



118 CAMPING OUT 

ful, and in the morning we soon made the run to 
the end of the lake, where a team will take you to 
where the Raquette is navigable. You can also 
branch off at Forked Lake and make a detour here 
via the Tupper Lakes, but, as it involved a two- 
mile carry through the brush over a blazed trail, 
we passed it up. The old settler with his team 
soon delivered us into the Raquette again, and, as 
it was swift and rocky, I put Joan the Intrepid in 
the bow. Between us is a perfect understanding, 
so that words are unnecessary as to which side of 
a given boulder to head the canoe, and never yet 
have I seen her even scared, let alone panic-stricken, 
no matter whether the danger be wild beast or wild 
water. "We were told that the flies were awful on 
the Raquette, but found them not so bad, nor was 
that beautiful stream hard to negotiate, so that in 
due time we reached Buttermilk Falls, where the 
river drops a hundred feet, and a long one and 
one-half mile carry began. In taking this it is 
well to end at the second prong leading down to 
the river. Most canoeists take the first, which you 
will recognise by a high cleared field on the right 
of the road, but an eighth of a mile beyond this 
is the second prong, which leads you to a delicious 
camp site situated on a high table far above the 
river. A grove of big pines keeps this spot clear 



WE DISCOVER ADIRONDACKS 119 

of underbrush, and the oak chips of a large boat 
once built here furnishes an abundance of fire- 
wood. 

Here we camped, with the sun setting behind 
the tall mountains round about. I fished the 
waters, as they looked bassy, for there was many 
a bank of pickerel weed — but never a strike. We 
put away the tackle, discouraged, and next morn- 
ing pushed down Long Lake to the village of that 
name, where we grubbed up. That afternoon the 
wind got up so strong that we were finally driven 
ashore at a tiny beach under the lee of Mt. Kemp- 
shall, opposite Camp Islands. Here we put in at 
about three o'clock and put up the tent to take a 
swim. As we might fare farther and do worse on 
camp sites, we finally made it our night's camp. 
It was a wild, lonely spot, free of flies, with naught 
but buck tracks on the sand, and twice during the 
night wild cats shrieked at us from the swamp at 
our rear, and once a bear grunted, but Joan in her 
tent cot gave no sign of being perturbed ; in fact 
she mentioned these details as a matter of course 
next day. 

The next morning we started early, and, helped 
by the protecting bulk of Buck Mountain oppo- 
site, we ran the rest of Long Lake without becom- 
ing wind-bound and were soon in the Eaquette 



120 CAMPING OUT 

Eiver again. Followed a morning of sheer beauty. 
The river was placid and easy to negotiate ; deer 
came down to drink ; wild animals were to be seen 
at every bend. I tried fishing, but soon ran into a 
sign saying that some rich man owned the whole 
damn river and you were to leave his fish alone! 
By noon we made Eaquette Falls and did the carry 
in an hour or so, and here we ran into the first 
sign of real fishing. A party had just come up 
the river and had a nice bass of some three pounds 
weight and two large pike, caught that afternoon 
in an hour's fishing. We rigged up as soon as we 
got under way and presently had two bass, taken 
trolling with a single spoon. Made Axton, the 
Deserted Village, by sundown : a desolate spot, the 
best camp site being under a pair of pines up on 
a high, grassy hill. 

Next day we started up Stony Brook, interest- 
ing because of several beaver dams, over which 
the canoe was to be hauled. Here these same 
beaver played a scurvy trick on us. The map shows 
both Stony Brook and Ampersand flowing into 
Stony Pond : the beaver have dammed Ampersand 
into Stony at one of its bends and before you 
know it you are going up Ampersand. It leads in 
for four miles back of Stony Brook Mountains, 
and gets you nowhere, but we did not grudge the 



WE DISCOVER ADIRONDACKS 121 

day lost on it, for here Emerson, Lowell and Agas- 
siz once camped in 1857, and made the pages of 
literature resound with the beauties of Amper- 
sand. Clear as crystal, it winds up through rocky 
defiles grown high with spruce and balsam, now a 
calm dead-water, now a rushing rapids, every so 
often a beaver dam or a great windfall of down 
trees to make it interesting. It is the far-famed 
Edmundsklamm and the Ober-Schluese of the Bo- 
hemian Switzerland rolled into one — for sheer 
beauty one of the loveliest spots in the whole 
Adirondacks. Finally Ampersand becomes a mere 
wading proposition, pulling and hauling the canoe 
by a tow rope, and at about two o 'clock we began 
to realise that somehow we must have got up Am- 
persand instead of Stony Brook, as the map shows 
the pond but a mile up the brook and we had done 
at least four. So we started back, and, at the last 
beaver dam, the mystery was cleared, for a 
straight cutoff took us direct back into Stony. 
Beware of straight cutoffs ! Nature never makes 
them, as I ought to have known when we left the 
sinuosities of Stony to go up it that morning. In 
half an hour more we were in Stony Brook pond 
and had camped on the high bank at its farther 
side. 
From there at sunrise through Second Stony 



122 CAMPING OUT 

pond and over the carry to Upper Saranac was 
but a morning's work and by noon we had carried 
past Saranac Club and out into Middle Saranac. 
Quite a sea was on it, and Joan went to the bow. 
Four miles we shot across the lake before a 
smother of storm. The Doc was more than un- 
easy; his goat had become detached and he looked 
anxiously for a lee Shore. We passed several 
great sunken rocks, with white caps curling over 
them, and at the far end was a vast field of 
pickerel grass with the outlet somewhere con- 
cealed therein. And about here Joan's fiery cour- 
age showed her mettle, so like that of dauntless 
Joan of five centuries before. Whether riding 
her horse at breakneck speed, sailing a boat in 
a smart blow, mountain climbing, shooting or fish- 
ing for game fish, Joan is always the same — cour- 
ageous and capable — and it was the school of the 
great outdoors that made her so. 

We bore swiftly down into the pickerel grass, 
heading into a spot where they seemed to be thin- 
ning out. Here was the outlet — or nowhere, for 
there would be no turning back against that sea 
and wind. Presently we shot into the still waters 
of the Saranac Eiver, while the lake roared out- 
side, our hunch proving good medicine. 



1 . -ftM 




WE DISCOVER ADIRONDACKS 123 

'*We got the Doc's goat that time, Cap," 
chirped Joan over her shoulder. 

*'It just isn't done — that's all!" demurred the 
Great Soul truculently. ^'I wouldn't have made 
that traverse for a million ! ' ' But the peace of the 
Saranao descended upon us; also the black flies 
were gone for good. An hour's paddling brought 
us to the lock where we boiled the kettle and then 
slept for an hour. We were waked by two old- 
timer Adirondack natives coming up the lock. 
Typical men of the woods were they, of a hale old 
age but vigorous and with a forward stoop to the 
shoulders that spoke get-there in every line. They 
raised the lock with their guide boat in it and we 
emptied it again to let our canoe down. Next came 
a beautiful paddle down the Saranac, under tall 
rock cliffs that towered far aloft with pigmy 
spruces growing out of crevices in their sides, and 
by sunset we were out of the big marshes in the 
lower end and soon made the Narrows. This is 
all State land and good camp sites everywhere. 
We passed several, occupied, and finally Joan 
spied a clump of pines on a rock point ahead where 
we landed and were at last on our Isle of Delight 
— 120 canoe miles from Old Forge. Only at night 
did the mosquitoes and punkies bother us, making 
it necessary to cut out the camp-fire and take to 



124 CAMPING OUT 

the tents soon after dusk, but we soon settled down 
to a fine regime as follows : Sunrise ; batli in the 
lake ; grub, painting and writing music, more bath 
in the lake, dinner at four, bass fishing around the 
islands until eight p. m. ; bed. Nobody did a stroke 
of honest work. It was delicious. I taught Joan 
skittering with a five-ounce fly rod and a single 
spoon with a three-foot gut leader on it, and to- 
gether we floated out the golden evenings taking 
bass and pike to our heart's content, while picture 
after picture of mountain and lake melted and 
faded under the sinking sun. The bass struck her 
lure four to my one, but when that one did hit my 
dancing minnow he was a big one ! and, then, the 
next day after I would be aware that certain little 
violet eyes had been busy watching scenic effects 
while a sun-burned forearm was taking bass, for 
on the easel her paint brush would spread a gor- 
geous sunset, over black and beetling Boothbay 
mountain, bold and forbidding in his purple shad- 
ows, while an orange sky, mirrored by an orange 
lake, set off his majestic bulk. You can't paint a 
sunset while the sun is making it, but Joan's keen 
memory could put it on her canvas next day. 

Soon the grub ran out, and we went in through 
the fourteen-mile chain of lakes and river to Sara- 
nac Lake village. Somewhere in a narrow pass 



WE DISCOVER ADIRONDACKS 125 

of the chain a wild man suddenly rose out of the 
bushes and challenged us whether by any chance 
our canoe could be Warren Miller and party. 
Nicky! by all the Red Gods! He had been wait- 
ing for us three days at that narrow point, photo- 
graphing and flashlighting beaver by night and 
dozing by day. 

''I'm Exhibit A in these regions," gurgled 
Nicky as we went ashore to visit. ''Every party 
that passes comes ashore here to poke me and see 
if I am dead or alive." 

He showed us his bathing suit, sewed up at the 
arms, which he pulled over his head at night so 
as to sleep free of flies, while a pair of socks pro- 
tected either hand and an extra shirt kept them 
from biting into his back. But the great stunt of 
Nicky's outfit he now exhibited with huge pride — 
ten tins of canned heat, solidified alcohol ! 

"I'm through with camp-fires and picking up 
sticks!" declared Nicky through four days' 
growth of beard. "It's too much work, and I 
came up here to rest. ' ' Whereat he proceeded to 
put his system to test. Over the alcohol went a 
diminutive fry-pan full of steak, and, while this 
was frying, a dose of postum went into another 
pan. This went on the burner while the steak was 
being gnawed, to the accompaniment of a hunk of 



126 CAMPING OUT 

rye bread, which Nicky chewed because, as he ex- 
plained, he was too lazy to cut it. 

''Only some more unnecessary work," grunted 
Nicky cheerfully between mouthfuls of steak. "I'll 
admit that I'm a mere swine compared to your 
standards of camping, Miller, but then I simply 
would not have your standards, don't you see" — 
which is ample explanation for any conduct of 
life, from cannibalism to eating blubber ! 

At Saranao we wired for Professor Andrews 
and Arthur Loesser, the famous accompanist of 
Maud Powell, and, what with a thunderstorm and 
an uncounted census of ice creams eaten by Joan, 
we did not get started back until long after dark. 
Nicky and the Doc soon got lost in the stumps on 
Lake Otseetah, and, a big windstorm coming up, 
we headed for a light which proved to be the camp 
of a hospitable German from Boston. He and his 
little wife took us in and set before us everything 
from beer to champagne, such is the hospitality of 
all outdoorsmen. About midnight the storm 
abated and we set out again, but were soon lost in 
the stumps as it was too dark to even see the 
headlands, so we finally took refuge on the Ger- 
man's porch at 1.30 a. m. We tried to be off 
early, but his little wife beat us to it and set out 
coffee, eggs, cereals and toast for the whole crowd, 



WE DISCOVER ADIRONDACKS 127 

so that we could not refuse a breakfast with them. 
It was ten o'clock before we bade our pleasant 
hosts good-bye. 

Nicky was dying with ingrowing conversation, 
and forthwith stole my wife, so for fourteen miles 
Joan had naught to do but lie at ease in his canoe 
and keep the conversation going with a chance 
word or two slipped in edgewise. Indeed, with the 
Professor and Arthur Loesser up next day I saw 
but little of her for the rest of the week — you know 
how it is, husbands are an old story but these men 
were all new and interesting. 

Returned to the island, our camp was now a 
most exquisite experience. The boys were all in- 
tellectuals of the keenest, and the witty repartee, 
learned sayings and deep discussions of every con- 
ceivable subject in the domain of the fine arts that 
went on about that camp reminded one of a scene 
from Trilby in the studio of Little Billie. Joan 
and I solved the punkie problem by putting our 
two tarps up as a wedge tent and sewing in ends 
of thin lawn, which the tiniest of squeazlegeaques 
cannot get through. Nicky slept on a rock in his 
awe-inspiring costume, and the Andrews and 
Loesser used the Doc's tent which will sleep three 
at a pinch. The three cuisines were separate, but 
each mess often invited the other crowd to eat, 



128 CAMPING OUT 

as, for example, when Nicky saw that his two- 
pound beefsteak was sure going bad and so gave a 
beefsteak party or the Andrews opened a can of 
pears or when the Millers caught a big mess of 
fish and gave a fish dinner to all. 

The boys had all their stuff in numerous 
end-opening duffle bags, and, as the Doc's shaving 
cream was at the bottom of one of the five, our 
camp site was soon strewn with the contents of all 
of them. It is unnecessary to add that the cream 
in question turned up in the bottom of the last 
one— ''Good massage for the hip joint," as the 
Doc explained in parenthesis. 

''My curse upon you!" cried Professor An- 
drews genially from the fireplace. "Where in all 
that muddle is my salt shaker?" Followed an^ 
other search, in which socks became separated 
from their mates, pyjama tops from their bot- 
toms, and the important ends of sundry bathing 
suits lost for good and all. 

''Oh, for a good, rousing thunderstorm!" ex- 
claimed Cap, under his breath, with unholy joy. 
But it didn't materialise. In the Adirondacks 
they do their raining at night, leaving the days 
dear and sunshiny. However, that meal for the 
Andrews was cooked and eaten at length, and all 
their duffle stood in the hikers' tent, Nicky hover- 



WE DISCOVER ADIRONDACKS 129 

ing around the outskirts of the feed with his pos- 
tum can, his rye bread and his steak, surrepti- 
tiously coming in on any loose ends of food that 
might be left over. 

Professor Andrews then disposed his lengthy 
form on the rock on which Joan was squatting 
with her sketch box, and I foresaw little painting 
done on Mt. McKensie that afternoon, but some- 
how she managed to keep the flow of conversation 
going incessantly, while brush-stroke by brush- 
stroke the canvas grew, until I called her at 4 
o 'clock to eat and go bass fishing. 

And so the golden days slipped by;, an ideal 
existence — I could have kept it up all summer — 
freedom to loaf and invite your soul, charming 
and entertaining companions, all the time in the 
world to work at that which you liked to do best, 
and — no worries! 

We ended our stay with a climb up Bootbay 
Mountain through the trackless forest. The, view 
from the burnt rocky eminence at its southern end 
is one of the finest in the whole Adirondacks, and 
all our former route as far back as Forked Lake 
lay stretched out below us. Never have I seen so 
much deer sign as on that mountain, and, the fates 
being willing, Joan and I will get our buck there 
this FaU. 



130 CAMPING OUT 

Finally Joan and I turned our canoe reluctantly 
homeward, leaving the blessed boys camped on 
their rock. They came home later, via the Tupper 
Lakes (two mile carry in the worst brush in the 
State) to Forked Lake, thence to Raquette Lake 
to Raquette Station, but we went in to Saranac 
Lake, changing into cits at an abandoned camp 
site a few miles out of town. 

It was a fine, inexpensive two weeks, full of 
health and hard work, and, oh, ye outdoorsmen, 
if you want the finest of chums on a trip like that, 
train up your little wife to be a real outdoor girl 
and take her along ! 



CHAPTER VI 

CAMPING OUT DE LTJXE 

That eminent satirist, Mr. George Jean Nathan, 
regards camping out as the most terrible of mod- 
ern diversions. While this simply proves that the 
critic's judgment is pronounced from a mere play- 
goer's viewpoint — ^material on camping gathered, 
most likely, from some movie screen — the fact is 
that most people, while fascinated with the idea, 
regard it as something which only the elect can 
do with any degree of comfort. 

Camping out is a fine art; one of those things 
that are worth doing well if done at all. It is 
quite easy to bungle it, and so sentence yourself 
to a variety of nuisances from which you are nor- 
mally shielded by the bulwarks of civilisation. It 
is also very easy to do it right ; the formulas are 
few and simple, and camping with a modem 
equipment involves really so little deviation from 
civilised standards of existence that it is well 
worth learning. Living for a while in some wild 
beauty spot under canvas, close to the busy life 
of nature, steeped in the ozone of the forest air, is 

131 



132 CAMPING OUT 

an gesthetic enjoyment, relished the more keenly 
the more intellectually inclined is the normal bent 
of the camper-out. If you have a flair for nature 
study, — trees, botany, birds, outdoor photography 
— or, if you want to indulge in the sterner sports 
of angling for gamy fish, wingshooting for wild- 
fowl and the game birds of the wilderness, or 
hunting the big game that abounds, — to camp right 
on the ground and live the life of the woodsman 
for a while is by far a better solution than to at- 
tempt some fisherman's boarding house, hunter's 
''camp" or other form of quasi-hotel life, in which 
your companions are not of your own choosing. 

Within the limits of this chapter, I shall not 
take up any of your time in going into the thou- 
sands of ways of camping out which are either 
obsolete, impractical or belonging to the specialty 
of hunter's and explorer's camping, where a cer- 
tain amount of hardship is endured as a matter of 
course. Having camped for more than thirty 
years, at first several times a year, later once a 
month every month in the year, and, at present 
writing, once a week throughout all but the ex- 
treme winter months, I have had the opportunity 
to test and observe and experiment with camping 
outfits for various purposes, and so take the keen- 
est pleasure in prescribing for you, as it were, an 



CAMPING OUT DE LUXE 133 

outfit that would best suit the outdoor lover who 
wants to try a few weeks of it with some assur- 
ance that he and his family will have reasonable 
comfort, cleanliness and enjoyment without being 
forced to transport into the forest a van load of 
impedimenta. 

You will desire, to begin with, to look well and 
properly dressed when taking your outing ; to look 
the part, so to speak, so that you will command 
respect in place of derision wherever you may be. 
Good camping clothes are becoming both for the 
male and female of the species, and your back- 
woods yokel recognises them at sight and tips his 
hat to you instead of visiting contumely upon 
you as he surely will if you appear before him in a 
gipsy assortment of odds and ends of old clothes. 
Your camping togs should withstand wear, rain, 
briars and scraggs, m\id and swampy duff with 
equal impunity. An olive drab flannel shirt, army 
breeches of the same colour in wool, both electro- 
waterproofed ; grey wool socks (two pairs worn at 
a time), cruiser moccasins with tap and heel of 
about 14 inches height ; belt ; silk tie ; and Stetson 
broad-rimmed hat, will make a sprack, natty 
camper of you, as good to look at as any army oflS- 
cer, and as practically dressed to the service as he. 
I have caught bass in a driving thunderstorm in 



134 CAMPING OUT 

this rig, right after wading through hundreds of 
yards of wet ferns, and was not in the least wet 
inwardly. No khaki or old clothes would protect 
you in such case, in the slightest. A sweater coat, 
with high collar, and a light rubber raincoat that 
will fold into your pocket, will serve to keep you 
warm in the chill night air of the forest, or during 
a raw spell of northeast weather. Omit the fan- 
tastic bandana — it always appears to us old- 
timers as just a bit too-too-ey ; out of place, except 
in the West where it has a real use, that of keep- 
ing alkali and dust out of your neck. Such an 
outfit of clothing will cost about $50 and is worth 
it, for it will last forever. 

For the outdoor girl, in summer she does very 
well with a khaki skirt, bloomers, Norfolk jacket 
smartly tailored, khaki shirtwaist with half a 
dozen khaki collars ; an extra wool shirtwaist for 
cold spells ; and a sweater or Mackinaw coat. On 
her feet, a pair of lady's high hunting boots, of 
about sixteen inch height, with one pair of wool 
socks worn. A becoming felt hat and tie, and a belt 
with Norwegian fishing knife in its sheath, com- 
plete her toilette, except for a pair of buckskin 
gloves with cuffs, which she will wear when pad- 
dling in cold spells, about camp at night, etc. Such 
an outfit was worn by my better half during our 



CAMPING OUT DE LUXE 135 

120-inile canoe trip across the Adirondacks last 
summer, omitting the Mackinaw coat. The latter, 
plus a divided skirt and Norfolk jacket of Eng- 
lish tweed, went with her on a 150-mile saddle trip 
across the Rockies in snowy weather, and the two 
outfits serve her for winter and summer outings. 
The khaki suit costs $10 and the tweed $50, boots, 
hat and sweater coat about $25 more, but she will 
look right and feel becomingly dressed, which is 
worth more to her than much game and many fish. 
For a tent you want something light, rain proof 
and insect proof ; high enough to stand up in, and 
well enough ventilated to keep cool in the daytime. 
Of all shapes I think the so-called ''snow tent'* is 
the easiest to put up, lightest for the amount of 
space, and most comfortable for general camping. 
A picture of it is shown here to save detailed de- 
scription. It wants a large window in the rear, 
with gauze filling and a canvas dormer over it to 
close down in stormy weather, a veranda to be 
guyed out in front so you can build a cook fire in 
front of- the tent door when it is raining, and an 
oval door with high sill, the same well filled with 
gauze. The sill is needful to keep dirt and sand 
from being tracked inside, and the window not 
only to give you a view both ways when inside the 
tent, but to provide a current of air through the 



136 CAMPING OUT 

tent to keep it from getting as hot as a bake oven 
in the daytime. It should have a sod cloth, but not 
a ground cloth, the latter making the tent unnec- 
essarily heavy and being awkward in case your 
only available terrain has some uncompromising 
stump or boulder or root occupying a part of your 
floor space. This happens too often in picking a 
new camp site in a wild country to make the floor 
cloth anything but a nuisance, for it will not go 
over the obstruction gracefully, causing the tent 
to go up out of shape. The snow tent is 7 x 7 feet 
for a man and his wife, weighs about 6 lbs. in mod- 
ern light fabrics, and the peak should be about 
eight feet high. It is put up with ten pegs, a bridle 
and club, and a pair of shears. 

My own tent for this sort of camping is a modi- 
fication of the snow tent called the *' Handy" tent. 
It is G X 6 feet high, with an 18 inch wall 
around three sides and is put up with 12 pegs and 
a single pole instead of a bridle and shears. The 
gauze for window and door should be of fine ecru 
scrim, as anything larger will not keep out 
punkies and midges, in which some forests, par- 
ticularly the Adirondacks, abound. They usually 
drive the party indoors soon after sundown, when 
you take your electric flasher and locate and 
calmly murder every black fly, midge, mosquito 



CAMPING OUT DE LUXE 137 

and other pest that has gotten inside during the 
day, after which you can enjoy a night's peaceful 
sleep. 

In spite of all that has been written about 
browse beds, stick beds, stretcher beds and the 
like, I feel that the light folding tent cot is the best 
for general camping. The Westgard cot, for ex- 
ample, weighs but eleven pounds and is set up in a 
jiffy, whereas to make a browse or stretcher bed 
takes a lot of time and work when you had rather 
be loafing and smoking. We generally take the 
Westgard for my wife and no cot at all for me, to 
save weight on canoe trips where there are long 
portages. A few spruce boughs serve me very 
well, and are collected quickly with a hatchet off 
the nearest spruce, with maybe a topping of bal- 
sam. When alone, I take a stretcher bed, weigh- 
ing 114 lbs., and out my own poles for it, which 
poles also form the framework for the tent tar- 
paulin; but where we can get our things carried 
for us, by boat, team, canoe or toboggan, we take 
along two cots. These tent cots are cold to sleep 
on at night unless you take the trouble to collect 
enough dry leaves or pine needles or fresh balsam 
or pine sprays to make a sort of mattress about an 
inch thick on the cot, when it will be warm and 
comfortable. Without it you will be cold, even in 



138 CAMPING OUT 

a sharp night in June, and that with the warmest 
of sleeping bags or blankets ! 

For sleeping bed clothes, the outfitters seem so 
stubborn about insisting on heavy or else very ex- 
pensive sleeping bags that we have been forced to 
devise a comfortable yet light quilt bag, home- 
made of brown sateen and Australian wool bats, 
which you can get at any department store for 17 
cents a bat. The sateen is thirty inches wide, and 
you will need eight yards of it. Cut off four yards, 
spread out six bats to cover six feet of the strip, 
and fold the remaining six feet over on top of the 
bats. Hem and quilt to make a brown wool quilt, 
30 inches wide by six feet long. Do the same with 
the other four yards, and then sew the two quilts 
into a bag, six feet long by thirty inches wide, 
open at the top and down one side for about two 
feet. Anybody that can run a sewing machine can 
make this bag and it will weigh 31/2 Ihs., cost $5, 
and be warm when ice is forming in the camp 
pails. The same thing, sewed up in fur, is the 
best bet for winter camping. My wife and daugh- 
ter both use these wool quilt bags in all their 
camping, while I and my son use packsack sleep- 
ing bags, a contrivance devised by me to be a 
packsack by day and a sleeping bag at night. It 
is the ideal hiker's sleeping rig, but takes some 



CAMPING OUT DE LUXE 139 

time at night to lace up as a bag, and again, to 
lace up in the morning as a pack. 

For a cooking outfit, there is no need to go fur- 
ther than the nesting aluminum outfits sold by the 
sporting goods houses. These come in sets for 
parties of from two to ten people. You will need 
three pails, a fry pan and a baker, all in aluminum, 
as this metal will not scorch food over the camp 
fire because it has three times the conductivity of 
steel and so distributes the heat instead of local- 
ising it over some camp fire flame and causing a 
hot scorching spot, as steel is always doing. Get 
your own table set; enamelware for both plates 
and cups, as aluminum is no good for either, since 
its great conductivity makes the cup rim too hot 
to drink out of and steals all the heat from your 
food when it is on the plate. Get a cheap yet 
"homey" set of knives, forks and spoons for the 
table service, and take along a packet of paper 
napkins, so as to eat your meals like a human 
being. 

You will need a baker, and the one I use for 
small parties is a reformed aluminum fry pan, 
with cover and folding handle. This is oval in 
shape, about 9 inches long by 7 wide, and 1^2 
inches deep, and was intended by its maker for a 
fry pan, but a worse one could not possibly have 



140 CAMPING OUT 

been devised. However, it makes a "star" baker, 
light and compact, just right for two, or three at a 
pinch. Put your corn bread batter or biscuits in 
the pan, on with the cover and fold over the han- 
dle until it snaps fast, then set in a hot place high 
over a bed of glowing coals, capsize when risen 
and bake the other side, and you will have a fine 
cake, or the best rolls or biscuits you ever put in 
your mouth ! My wife and I, who go everywhere 
together, as befits two chums in love for the last 
twenty years, take on our trips two nesting pails, 
a fry pan, a mixing pan, and the baker, and find 
this cook outfit ample. 

It may cause a shudder to go through you to 
learn that camping out, as sensibly done, requires 
but two meals a day, but it is a most solid fact. 
In city life we eat too much and do not digest 
half of what we eat. In camp your digestion does 
much better, and two meals a day are ample. The 
Indian, who is the greatest camper of us all, has 
a saying that ''No man can eat meat more than 
twice from sun to sun and yet remain healthy in 
mind and body," and it is absolutely true. In 
two days in the woods you will begin to realise 
this unless an intestinal upset and a sick headache 
from too much eating has not already told you so. 
Chum and I usually begin our day with a plunge 



CAMPING OUT DE LUXE 141 

in the lake about eight o 'clock, a real swim, lasting 
maybe an hour. Then we cook up a hearty break- 
fast of coffee, fish, potatoes, bread and fruit. The 
dishes for this are washed and the cuisine put 
away in some ten minutes' time, after which we 
spend the mid-day painting and writing music, 
for she is an artist by profession and my hobby is 
composition for the organ. About four o'clock we 
cook up a great feed, of meat stew, rice, tea, a 
canned vegetable, dried fruit stewed in a pot- 
pourri and biscuits or rye bread (which keeps 
fresh a long while in camp), after which the lake 
has quieted down, sunset has begun and the bass 
and pike are out feeding. We then sally forth in 
the canoe and fish until dark, catching all we need 
and enough to give away to neighbours. Then a 
small camp fire, and to bed by nine. If I am out 
hunting or fishing at dawn, I grab a cup of coffee 
and a hunk of bread and set forth before the sun, 
arriving back at camp by eight or nine, when the 
hunting and fishing for the day is over, and then 
the same regime is followed. On the trail two 
meals a day, with a light cold snack and a pipe at 
noon, are all that are permissible for either canoe- 
ing or horseback travelling. It takes two hours 
at least to cook, eat and clean up after a meal 



142 CAMPING OUT 

when you have to unpack and pack things for 
travelling, and it just isn't done! 

For camp food the best in the long run are the 
sensible home foods instead of prepared and 
"doped" concentrated things sold for explorer's 
use. You are not on an Arctic trip, nor yet dis- 
covering a new way up Mount McKinley, so why 
endure these rations? I even take potatoes, if 
transportation permits them, and a few canned 
things. Most of your stuff is, however, light, raw 
materials, rice, flour, com meal, coffee, tea, etc., 
which add to themselves from two to six times 
their weight of water from the spring in cooking. 
They are best carried in waterproof paraffin mus- 
lin bags, and friction top tins, the whole in a side 
opening food bag with pockets, so that when you 
hang it up by the fire on a couple of stakes every- 
thing you want is right in sight. Such a bag goes 
with us on all our trips except lone hikes for 
hunting and fishing, where a knapsack carries all 
one's worldly possessions. Our usual grub list 
is displayed on p. 218. The eggs we carry are 
broken into a friction top tin, 3 inches diameter 
by 5 high, which will hold fourteen. 

For trail accessories — you need steering here 
more than anywhere else — the aim is to not leave 
the essentials behind and to leave out the non- 



CAMPING OUT DE LUXE 143 

essentials as the way these latter pile up in weight 
and bulk is past understanding until you try it. 
You need one light axe, a Damascus steel belt axe 
or a Hudson's Bay axe with long handle, depend- 
ing on whether you expect to do much chopping or 
not. Either will weigh about 2 lbs. and cost some 
$2.50. A hunting knife; the Tatronife and the 
Marble Guide's Special are two very good ones, 
costing about $1.50. An electric flasher; the 
handiest tool in the dark you ever put in your 
pocket, costs 50 cents. A candle lantern; fine in 
the tent, good out of doors and not so likely to get 
out of order as a carbide. The latter, however, is 
essential for large parties where a lot of light is 
wanted. Cost of lantern, folding, in aluminum, 
$2.50. A night hood, or night cap, of wool or 
pontiac; on cold nights you must have it, to sleep 
comfortably, as your hat is a poor substitute. 
Night socks; a pair of warm, woolly ones, espe- 
cially reserved and kept bone dry for that pur- 
pose. Do not go out at night with them on or they 
will get damp and give you cold feet. Better en- 
dure bare feet, as these quickly dry, which the 
socks do not. Cooking gloves ; cost, ten cents at 
any department store in the hardware depart- 
ment, save burnt fingers, dirty paws, cold hands, 
and enable you to pick up hot pails and firebrands 



144 CAMPING OUT 

with impunity. A light wire grate; better than 
any makeshift of logs, and will save many a 
scorched dish. A sewing kit, the smaller the bet- 
ter, but well provided with buttons, safety pins, 
and needles and thread for both clothes and moc- 
casins. The one sold for the army boys for 85 
cents is a good one. A toilet kit of about the same 
size; has tooth brush and paste, razor and soap, 
looking glass and wash rag, also towel. A fold- 
ing canvas basin for washing ; that hasty rinse in 
the brook will not do the business, and soon you 
begin to long for a tub; better try hot water in 
that canvas basin and get really washed and re- 
freshed. A folding canvas bucket to carry spring 
water and have it handy in camp ; springs are not 
found behind every bush in the woods, and lake 
and brook waters are dangerous and medicinal. 
A yard of cheesecloth to keep your meat and fish 
cold in; hang, tied up in the cheesecloth, in the 
shade and turn a cup of water over it several times 
a day. Proof against blow flies and the coldest 
way to keep meat in summer, unless the spring is 
near enough to camp to permit building a spring 
house. A light, compact medicine kit ; take along 
pills for constipation, diarrhoea, fever, colds, and 
headaches, antiseptic solutions, and a little surgi- 
<?^1 tape and bandages. Don't take too much or 



CAMPING OUT DE LUXE 145 

too bulky a kit, for you will probably not use it 
at all. Fly dope and a head net ; particularly in 
the North woods where they have seven kinds of 
biting and stinging insects. A compass and a 
waterproof match safe; both always on you, the 
compass in the watch pocket of your breeches, 
without having on which you are not likely to fare 
forth ! Maps, in a leatheroid case ; a fly book and 
a leather tackle bag to prevent the hooks from 
penetrating through and ruining clothing ; a com- 
pact camera with roll film ; and, finally, a carry-all 
to hold nearly all these things. This may be a 
pocket-bag of khaki, opening out flat, with tapes 
to hang it up on two stakes at the head of your 
bed, where everything is ready to hand in its own 
pocket when wanted, and, what is more essential, 
returned when done with, so as not to get lost. 
You will further need a wire-cloth stick mop for 
dish washing, a dish towl and a small piece of 
kitchen soap. 

These are about all ; there are at least a million 
other things that you would like to take, or are 
convinced that yotj would not be happy without, 
but go light on them, for the list is weighty and 
bulky enough *as it is, as you will find when you 
come to portage it. 

Two other suggestions occur. One is a camp 



146 CAMPING OUT 

box, in which you can pnt the whole outfit and 
check it to your destination. The baggage rules 
regard a box as a trunk if it is provided with rope 
handles and a lock and hinges, and it will be so ac- 
cepted for checking by the baggage men. Other- 
wise, it is a parcel and must be expressed. If 
you make such a box you will save lugging and 
chasing up a lot of more or less vulnerable camp 
duffle bags, none of which can be lost with im- 
punity. A box saves all this, besides making a fine 
camp table, and, once the forwarder has it and 
you have his check in pocket you can give it no 
further anxiety. Send it on well ahead, for if 
sent for the same train you are on it will most 
likely not be there when you get off at the jumping- 
off place, and ''the next train will be up next 
day," as the factotum assures you as he locks up 
the station and leaves you alone in a howling wil- 
derness, with a lumberjack's hotel as the sole 
refuge for twenty-four hours ! Sooner than take 
such a risk, better lug all your stuff on the train 
with the aid of porters and Pullman employes. 

The second suggestion is the camp stove. It is 
a great comfort in cold, snowy weather, and a nice 
thing to cook on in your tent in bad summer 
weather. The outfitters make them absurdly 
heavy, about ten pounds weight for a one-hole 




A I)A\ BKAItD TKNT AM) K( )l.l)l \( , ( \\ 




THE MORNING WASH FOLDING CANVAS BASIN 



CAMPING OUT DE LUXE 147 

stove ; but we have one home-made in 28-ga. sheet 
iron, two-hole, weighing but two and three-quarter 
pounds. We always take it in fall and winter 
camping. I do not like the idea of the pipe going 
up through the roof; better let it out on the side, 
with an elbow to turn it up, which elbow is not a 
formidable matter if made like a tin can with a 
large hole in one side. We use two two-foot joints 
of 2-inch pipe for our stove, and pack the meat 
in the lengths, rolled up in paraffined paper so 
that no space is lost. I even take this stove on 
back-pack trips, and the whole cook kit packs in- 
side it. Our "Handy" tent has a pipe hole in its 
wall for just this stove, and for that reason also, 
a ground cloth is omitted, as such a thing is im- 
possible when a stove is to be set up inside the 
tent. To manage a tent stove without filling the 
tent with smoke, you simply need a hot column of 
air in the pipe, without which it will not draw no 
matter how tall, and with which it will draw like 
a major if only two feet high. To get this hot 
column you must have the fire well started, with 
lids off and flames rising direct ; when well going, 
clamp on lid and the flames will burst out under 
the lids, finally finding the chimney outlet, up 
which they rush, and your draft is established. 
Never load on too much raw wood at a time ; it 



148 CAMPING OUT 

will make more smoke than the chimney can carry 
off. The aim is a bed of live coals and a few bil- 
lets in process of combustion. If it starts smok- 
ing around the lids, open up and get the fire flam- 
ing again if you have to make a human bellows of 
yourself to do so. A two-hole stove is the only 
one to get a meal on. One can manage a break- 
fast tolerably with a one-holer, but never a real 
outdoorsman's breakfast! At night one or two 
large oak billets, put on a bed of coals, will 
smoulder all night, keeping the chill off the tent ; 
all drafts should be closed to aid in this gradual 
charcoalising process. 

Of outdoor fires you will need to know three 
styles. The backlog fire is the best night heater. 
Cut five 4-inch red oak logs about a yard long each 
and pile them one above the other against two 
hornbeam stakes leaning somewhat backwards. 
Cut two short billets or andirons, and stake in 
place with a forestick across the front to hold the 
fire in bounds. Make a general fire in this grate, 
on the andirons as you would at home, and you 
will find that most of your heat will be reflected 
right into the tent from the backlogs instead of 
being dissipated into the forest as in the bonfire 
type of camp fire. The remains next morning are 
fine for a breakfast fire. A grid fire of blackjack 



CAMPING OUT DE LUXE 149 

oak is the best fire for your wire grate, and, if 
using a reflector baker, either keep a high, flam- 
ing billet resting on the edge of the wire grate or 
build a special fire for it of small backlogs about 
two feet long laid in between two pairs of upright 
stakes. Against this build a high fire, with the 
sticks laid up against the logs so as to produce a 
hot, high flame that will brown both top and bot- 
tom of the bread at the same time. For fire 
woods, except the last fire described, use only hot- 
coal woods, blackjack oak, red maple, ash, hickory 
and yellow birch. Reject all the quick-flaming 
woods, such as pine, and balsam, as these are 
neither hot nor last long, and never use popping 
woods, like hemlock, if you have any regard for 
your tent roof. 

With these few reflections on outfit we will con- 
clude. It would be useless to attempt to tell you 
the hundreds of kinks that suggest themselves to 
all campers in the woods, as each man will pick 
them up for himself as he goes along. I have de- 
scribed you a light, comfortable outfit, and one in 
which I trust no essential is lacking. The outfit 
is not cheap ; but is cheaper in the long run than 
a heavy inadequate lot of junk, and you will not 
want to make a bore of your outing, when any ex- 



150 CAMPING OUT 

perienced man will assure you that, if done right, 
camping out is the best fun in the world. 

I take the children along on a great many 
camps, but your better half will prefer the trip as 
a sort of honejnnoon, with a vacation from the 
children as one of the main attractions. If you 
take the kids, your work will be easily doubled, 
and cooking becomes a serious subject unless they 
are grown up to their 'teens, as, thank Heaven, 
mine are! By that time they will go generally 
with their own friends, but if they go with you, 
better leave the madam out and give a lot of your 
own time to running the camp, for a camp of kids 
is a sort of outdoor creche, where the male in- 
cumbent cooks, catches bait, instructs the young 
idea, sees that they do not get lost or drowned, 
and regulates the day so that it is not all play. 
A camp is a kid's paradise, and the dear crea- 
tures will impose on the grown-ups out of all 
measure if you try to give them all the swimming, 
boating, canoeing and fishing that they want to 
crowd into each and every day ! 



CHAPTER VII 



HORSEBACK CAMPING 



I'll admit that Joan and I are hopelessly old- 
fashioned. We have children, and dogs, and cats, 
and chickens, and pigeons — and a horse ! Our ''ga- 
rage " is a sassy little stable, built by the Kid and 
I some time back ; no evil-smelling car lurks in its 
depths, no stench of gasoline and machine oil 
greets your nostrils when you open its doors. 
Rather, it is the sweet incense of old-time hay, the 
clean smell of new straw, the healthful odours of 
oats and bran that fill the air you breathe; and 
there, greeting you of a morning with affectionate 
whinny, is a real live car, finished in glossy chest- 
nut brown, with furry ears that prick forward 
expectant of his morning meal of oats, and with 
soft brown eyes that look to you as a friend and a 
chum. Around your feet crowd an eager flock of 
hens, supervised by Admiral Dewey (who licked 
Captain Kidd, who licked Wattles, who licked 
Chanticleer, who licked Colonel Heezaliar) — the 
survival of a fighting line of roosters — and all 

151 



152 CAMPING OUT 

over your shonlders and the eaves of the barn fly 
the homing pigeons intent on their share of the 
morning's breakfast. 

I confess to a liking for all these reminders of a 
bye-gone and more gracious Republic than the 
hustling, roaring empire that is now America. I 
like my good friend the blacksmith, who shoes my 
horse once a month; I like to poke around his 
ruddy furnace and muss around the horses that 
await his sturdy arm ; and I like him all the better 
because he shoots beside me at the gun club and 
occasionally lets me in on a hunt with his farmer 
friends in the hinterland of our section. The 
smell of hay in the barn touches responsive 
chords of my memory, and, like the smell of box, 
recalls the stately days of long ago, before the 
telephone was the household tyrant, the bicycle 
and car had annihilated distance (and at the same 
time everything contained in that distance) and 
Rubber had become King in the modern house- 
hold. With the first whiff of gasoline dies Ro- 
mance, like a butterfly under its pitiless poison; 
and with it dies leisure, the liking for quiet 
thought, the perusal of books that are worth while. 

The supreme dignity of the old-style home was 
the horse. Just to see one now, or a fine team and 
carriage, is a relief after oceans of vulgar flivvers, 



HORSEBACK CAMPING 153 

carrying you know not what cargo of rascality. 
And to the sportsman the ownership of a horse is 
a double blessing — I dearly wish that I could ade- 
quately tell what my horse has meant to me ! He 
makes your home territory a happy hunting 
ground, taking you into intimate wildernesses that 
are forever forbidden the car; he keeps you 
freshly in touch with Mother Nature for he fits 
into her scheme, not antagonises it, and, whether 
he is drawing the family to school and the madam 
to market, or giving her a fine ride in the forest 
of an afternoon, or whether he is enabling you to 
take a refreshing gallop in the early scented 
morning hours before business, he is always the 
same, always a prince of joy, at every one's beck 
and call. For, unlike the car, he does not require 
masculine strong-arm cranking, he depends not 
on oil, gasoline or electricity to make him run, so 
that your youngest child may enjoy him unafraid, 
and, best of all to me, his gear makes you handle 
honest ofd leather, in place of leatherine or some 
other rubberised imitation as dead as the car it is 
upholstered on. 

Not only in your home life, but in your trip 
after big game is the friendship of the horse es- 
sential to the sportsman. There, in the mighty 
ranges of the West, the car is quite impossible. 



154 CAMPING OUT 

and you and your horse are the whole transporta- 
tion scheme. I have devoted before considerable 
space in this book to the pack horse and saddle 
horse knowledge that everj^ hunter should have 
when undertaking a trip to the Rockies for big 
game. Herein I propose to supplement that with 
such intimate and practical detail as will enable 
any sportsman to decide for himself whether to 
have a horse or not, how to take care of him in 
his daily life, and how to select and manage all 
the equipment that horseback riding has found 
essential. 

To begin with the cost: A good saddle horse, 
of around 1,100 lbs. weight and fifteen hands 
height, will eat about $12 worth of oats, hay and 
bran a month. This is on the supposition that he 
will be driven about two hours a day and ridden 
a like period of time. Such work wiU call for six 
quarts of oats a day, in three feeds, and two man- 
gers full of hay, morning and night. Trade 
horses, which are on the go all day, require much 
more, a large work horse needing all of twelve 
quarts of oats, but this does not apply to a gentle- 
man's horse, used for pleasure and the daily er- 
rand to town. Mine is hitched up every morning 
at eight, drives me to the train, the children to 
school, and continues on to take Joan to market, 




HiJl;~i:i'.A' K I .\Mi-iXG THE ARMY SADDLE 

AND hAUDLK HAi,> 




MORXING IX CAMP UXDER THE FIXES 



HORSEBACK CAMPING 155 

returning about 10:30 in the morning. In the 
afternoon he takes Joan for a two-hour ride on 
horseback in the forest, and in the evening he is 
again hitched up and driven to meet me at the 
station, after which he is fed and put to bed for 
the night. At present prices, a 100-lb. bag of oats 
costs $2.25 ; of bran, $2.50, and a 2254b. bale of 
hay costs $2.75. Two bags of oats last him a 
month, ditto bales of hay, and also half a bag of 
bran, of which he gets at evening a two-quart feed 
three times a week. One bale of straw every 
month serves him for bedding and costs about 
$1.50. This is all the expense, and in our case he 
repays it alone in the saving of household bills 
from marketing instead of ordering over the tele- 
phone, where the price is always 20 per cent 
higher for delivered groceries and the quality the 
worst left over in the store. All the rest of Billy, 
the Horse, is chargeable to pure pleasure. For 
the wife he is exercise and recreation far beyond 
the tame pleasures of riding around in a ear (even 
if it has a self-starter), and in character it keeps 
her courageous, capable and self-reliant, since 
horsemanship requires the constant exercise of 
these faculties. For the man of the house, the 
account runs to healthful exercise in the finest 
hour of the morning, bits of hunting and fishing 



156 CAMPING OUT 

that would have to be passed over in favour of 
business otherwise, and, at week-ends, horseback 
camping trips which are in a class by themselves 
as outdoor recreation. 

When I decided in favor of a horse instead of 
a car, our barn had been built for several years, 
with a capacity for being either garage or stable. 
It had a floor space of 14 by 18 feet, which will 
hold both a horse and a tin lizzie if the latter is 
about 12 feet over all, and, with an eye to either 
eventuality, I had put in a concrete floor, pitched 
centrally toward a cast-iron drain fixture. A box 
stall is by far the best scheme, so this I planned, 
leaving three feet from its wall to the rear end of 
the barn for stairs and entrance to the chicken 
house (which is a 6-foot by 6-foot wing added to 
the west end of the barn). Allowing 6 by 9 feet 
for the box stall, I first cut a 4 by 4-inch hole in 
the concrete floor, to take the foot of the 4 by 4- 
inch post forming one corner of the stall. The 
upper end was spiked to one of the rafters of the 
second floor of the barn. For material of stall 
sides I chose II/2 by 12-inch yellow pine, dressed 
both sides. The walls of the stall, four boards 
high, were spiked at the butt end to the wall of 
the bam by putting on 2 by 4-inch hemlock nail 
plates. The west corner required no post, simply 



HORSEBACK CAMPING 157 

a corner joint with a 2 by 4-inch nail strip, the 
east corner spiking securely to the 4 by 4-inch post 
already put in. The entrance to the stall was a 
gate three feet high, left between the end of the 
east wall of the stall and the north wall of the 
barn, the idea of this being to have the horse fac- 
ing the door instead of with his heels to the door, 
this because I have two active younger children 
who could reasonably be expected to play around 
the barn and get in range of his hoofs if the latter 
were aimed outward where they could kick. This 
left a four-foot runway across the front wall of 
the stall (which was four feet high, by the way), 
so that one had easy and safe access to the chicken 
house and the upstairs of the barn. It also left 
me a space of 9 by 14 feet for car or carriage. 

I next put in a stall floor of the same sized 
planks as the walls. A board floor is warm to the 
horse 's body when he lies down, whereas concrete 
will be cold through any amount of straw; it is 
easily taken up and cleaned, and it is not hard on 
their hoofs, while a concrete floor will soon give 
them sore feet. 

We were now ready for Billy, of whom I had 
heard as belonging to a jolly priest who had been 
chaplain of a regiment on the Mexican border, 
and, upon returning North with his horse, was 



158 CAMPING OUT 

anxious to dispose of the animal. My old friend 
Frank Stick and I went down to see the equine 
wonder, and wonder he proved to be, for he was a 
handsome, stylish beast, with a fine gallop, a nice 
canter, ditto single-foot, and a fair trot. Besides 
which, he proved to be a most well-bred and affec- 
tionate animal, of Arab strain, with the arching 
neck and small, pretty head of that breed; age 
about eight years, as we could tell by examining 
his teeth; and his purchase was soon concluded. 
Such an animal can be bought for from $150 to 
$250, depending upon conditions, costing much 
more in the city, where we saw horses not as good 
offered for $500. You want a nice, cobby animal, 
not too long in the body, and, for some reason or 
another, the chestnuts are daintier feeders than 
other colors, which is another point in their favor. 
Frank rode him the forty-five miles from Plain- 
field, N. J., to Interlaken, and Billy was installed 
in our barn, where he immediately sampled our 
hay and oats and found them as good as any he 
had tasted elsewhere. For some time thereafter 
we rode him with the McCIellan or army saddle 
only, as we had to learn his ways and that saddle 
is much safer than the English, though the latter 
is the only one for general riding. He was Joan's 
horse, bought with her savings, and she and he 



HORSEBACK CAMPING 159 

were soon in that dolorous condition known as "in 
love." They were inseparable, and, after trying 
all the usual horse tricks on her and finding her 
more than a match for him, a mutual understand- 
ing of perfect affinity was soon established be- 
tween them. With me he was always man to 
man, that is, he assumed that, of course, I knew all 
about galloping at break-neck speed and going 
around sharp comers without losing my stirrup, 
and sticking to him when he reared and pawed 
the air with his front hoofs, and he gave me small 
sympathy if I could not play the game according 
to the rules ! To this day he will not allow me to 
open a map on his back, rearing with terror at 
the flashing thing, and prancing all over the road, 
in spite of an iron hand holding down his bridle. 
Otherwise we get along in a state of armed neu- 
trality, and I have many a fine ride on him when- 
ever I get up early enough to do so. 

His introduction to the carriage took place a 
few days after arrival. I picked up a nice, fast- 
man's two-seat carriage, for it was just the thing 
for Joan to go to market in, to take the children 
to school, take me to the station and take herself 
for a drive. After the first harnessing up it is 
essential to lead the horse up and down the street 
until he gets used to the carriage, after a spell of 



160 CAMPING OUT 

which you can get in and drive him a little. If not 
overdone, driving him to carriage will not cause 
him to forget his riding gaits, and you then have 
a general family horse. 

It was not long before my two older children 
learned to ride like young centaurs, and, as for 
Billy, he lived the life of Riley, with plenty to eat, 
little hard work, and lots of riding through forest 
trails and up over the sand hills. 

For equipment we had to get him a pitchfork, 
curry-comb, horse brush, feed box, iron manger, 
blanket, halter, and salt holder. The iron manger 
cost $1.85, and is a wrought-iron affair, purchas- 
able at any hardware store, forming a sort of 
corner basket three feet on a side and the same in 
depth. I mounted it on the west corner of the 
stall by nailing up a wide 3-foot corner of boards 
so that the bottom of the manger came down on 
the top corner of the stall sides. You should keep 
it full of hay, one filling in the morning, another 
at noon, perhaps, and a third at night, in general 
providing him with all he can munch. The salt 
holder went on the east corner post, and is an iron 
contrivance which will just hold a horse salt brick. 
He will need a new one every two months, as he 
licks it away with his tongue whenever he needs 
salt, so that it soon looks like a used cake of soap. 



HORSEBACK CAMPING 161 

The feed-box is a corner iron basin, smooth sur- 
faced and smooth lipped, or it may be just a nice 
wood box holding two quarts or more of oats and 
nailed in the corner of the bin. 

A horse requires lots of water, and will need a 
large galvanized-iron pail hung in the stall and a 
smaller one for carrying water with. Do not let 
water stand in the stall pail nor let it get sour, 
but air and clean it every few days, or your horse 
will aptly acquire a stomach-ache. 

A barn, planned as such, should have a trap 
door in the second floor, with a block and falls 
above for hoisting up hay and straw, which come 
in 250-lb. bales. We had no such facilities as this, 
but have solved the difficulty by simply cutting 
open the bale down on the barn porch and carry- 
ing up the hay and straw in sections, impressing 
a chain of children to pass the stuff along. We 
can stow a whole bale that way in fifteen minutes, 
and I think it is less work on the whole than try- 
ing to hoist the entire bale. Hay comes layer by 
layer, bound up with iron wire, and the straw 
comes in tied bundles, of which one will be wanted 
each night. 

Of actual care a horse will require but little. 
He does not get sick easily as a dog does, nor is 
he anything like as much worry as the average 



162 CAJMPING OUT 

dog. Each morning he requires a good currying, 
which is the most healthful of exercise, followed 
by a rubbing down with the horse brush. This, if 
faithfully done, will keep his coat in prime condi- 
tion. My eldest boy does this, and cleans out the 
stall each day for $1 per week, a good way to keep 
him in pocket money without the charity of an 
"allowance." 

As to saddles and bridles we have three in use, 
the McClellan for me, the English for the rest of 
the family, and a Whitman loaned us by a friend. 
The McClellan has high pommel and cantle and a 
complete set of rings and brasses on which to 
fasten the cavalryman's travelling equipment. 
The English has nothing but a flat pad with plain 
German silver stirrups hung from stout straps, 
with a safety catch at the upper end of the stir- 
rup, so that if you fall off the strap will come 
loose and you will not be dragged with your foot 
in the stirrup. The Whitman is like the English, 
only with a higher cantle and air hole in the centre 
of the pad, and has rings on both cantle and pom- 
mel on which to fasten blanket roll or canteen. 
Such saddles cost from $25 up at the harness 
shop, or about $10 at second-hand military goods 
establishments. Bridles will stand you from $6 
for a plain single-rein bridle with nickelled steel 



i;iocLocK 




'^ OCLOCK 



TELLING TIME BY THE COMPASS 

TWICE THE ANGLE BETWEEN THE SUN AND SOUTH 




JOAN GRAZING THE HORSES NEAR CAM! 



HORSEBACK CAMPING 163 

bit to $16 for a double-rein bridle with curb and 
snaffle bits in magnolia metal. An ornamental 
head strap of coloured enamel leather, costing 
about 85 cents, adds much to the trig appearance 
of the bridle. As to bits, there are three varieties, 
the plain straight bit, little used, the curb bit with 
a ''port" or arch in the centre of the bit which 
will press up on the roof of horse's mouth when 
the rein is pulled, and the third type is the snaffle, 
a straight bit jointed in the centre so as to com- 
press the horse's mouth and lips when strongly 
pulled. The best of the three for horseback rid- 
ing is the curb bit, with not too much port, and 
two reins, one attached at the ends of the bit and 
used for ordinary riding, and the other rein at- 
tached at the lower end of the curb levers, so that 
when you pull on the reins the port of the bit is 
rotated to press up against the roof of his mouth 
and down against the jaw. As the leverage of 
this combination is very great you can break the 
jaw of your horse if he is correspondingly stub- 
born. Bringing the curb into play has the effect 
of making the horse rise on his hind legs, so that 
you need either a good knee grip on his withers 
or a high cantle on the saddle to remain on the 
horse. The bit itself costs about $6, and is best 
of some composition metal, as the wrought-iron 



164 CAMPING OUT 

and steel ones, however heavily nickel-plated, will 
in time wear through from the champing of the 
horse's teeth, exposing the iron to rust and be- 
coming unsightly. A very good complete bridle 
is the U. S. Cavalry bridle, on sale at the second- 
hand military dealer's for about $3. This has fine 
quality leather reins and head stall, a wrought- 
iron curb bit heavily nickelled, and, in general, 
these are condemned only because of change in the 
regulations and are still in good shape. 

So equipped, there is a world of fun ahead of 
you and your horse. To show a sample of what 
can be done of a week's end, I will tell here of a 
saddle camping trip that Joan and I and our two 
chums, Nicky and Dwight, took. We proposed 
to penetrate south into the Jersey pine country, 
taMng along our grub, sleeping and tenting out- 
fits and feed for the horses all on the regulation 
cavalryman's outfit. Enough for a two or three 
days' trip can be so taken by a party of four, 
without pack animals. The regulation Army sad- 
dle bags cost $1.75 at the military second-hand 
outfitter's, and the bags each measure fourteen 
by eighteen inches, and have outside pockets for 
maps and camera. The back of them is a broad 
piece of leather, forming a yoke where it goes 
over the saddle behind the cantle, and it is pro- 



HORSEBACK CAMPING 165 

vided with a brass-bound hole, through which 
projects the brass pin on the Army saddle for 
that purpose; also two brass-bound slots are on 
the yoke, through which project two U-shaped 
risers on the cantle, and through these are shoved 
the bolting straps, thus holding the saddle bag 
yoke fast to the saddle. A belly strap goes around 
under the horse, from bottom to bottom of the 
saddle bags to prevent their flapping, and this 
must not be cinched tight or the bags will chafe, 
particularly if you have not been careful to keep 
all hard-ended articles like cans, etc., away from 
the rear leather facing of the bags, just as you 
would in packing your own pack. As your horse 
cannot tell you that the thing hurts, you will not 
know of it until, on taking off the bags at the end 
of the day's ride, you find an ugly chafed spot, 
with all the hair gone. We found it impossible 
to get any more McClellan saddles at the various 
riding schools and livery stables, so wo had to 
content ourselves with two English saddles and a 
Whitman, which, with Billy's Army saddle, suf- 
ficed. Dwight and Nicky showed up in camping 
togs, their bed rolls done up ready for the cantle, 
and their grub in those old-style black rubberised 
canvas haversacks of Civil War times. I also 
bought a pair of these, at fifteen cents each, for 



166 CAMPING OUT 

carrying oats, likewise a pair of cavalry canteens 
for 65 cents, which have a short strap and snap 
hook for fastening to the pommel rings. 

Joan had her wool quilt sleeping bag, done up 
in a roll, the outside of which was a light Si^-lb. 
Blizzard tent, besides which she had a sweater 
for night use, folded lengthwise inside the roll. I 
had my packsack-sleeping bag, laced up as sleep- 
ing bag and rolled into a tight cantle roll, with 
nothing but a slicker and wool vest for night use 
inside of it. All the rest of our supplies — cook 
kit, grub, night socks, Joan's flannel shirt and her 
toilet kit — all went easily in the two saddle bags, 
with a camera in one of the pockets and some flat 
cans of butter and bacon in the other pocket. To 
outfit Billy for the hike we put on him the two 
saddle bags, my bed roll, two canteens on the 
pommel rings, and a halter and lariat for corral- 
making, lashed across the front of the pommel. 
Billy's blanket for night use went folded under 
his saddle on top of the usual pad. The Whitman 
saddle was easy to manage, for it had three rings 
on the cantle and two on the pommel, and Nicky 
simply had to secure his bed roll and canteen to 
the cantle rings and a pair of haversacks contain- 
ing oats and grub to the pommel ring*s, and he 
was ready. Dwight and I had the English sad- 



HORSEBACK CAMPING 167 

dies, and we rigged them both the same way — 
we lashed on the bed rolls behind, with thongs 
running down to the top buckles of the girth 
bands and hung the haversacks in pairs over the 
front of the pommel, tying them back to the same 
buckles of the girth straps. My original scheme 
of tying these to the top of the stirrup fasteners 
did not work at all, as it did not produce enough 
downward pull on the cantle roll so that it would 
not stay put. We wore nothing hung or draped 
about us, for the obvious reason that such ar- 
ticles will forever be bouncing about and will 
hamper one's freedom of movement when riding. 
So fitted out, we hit the trail southward, gallop- 
ing, trotting, and walking the horses down the 
open roads of the countryside. My nag devel- 
oped a penchant for keeping on the left-hand side 
of the road and backing into every automobile 
that came up behind, nor could she be induced to 
ride abreast of any other horse, so my first work 
was to train these faults out of her. I borrowed 
a spur from Dwight and a quirt from Nicky, and 
went to it. Soon the Old Man was master, and I 
had her eating right out of my hand. She had 
evidently never galloped before in her life, and 
was too gross and fat for any such agility, but 
she had a fast wagon trot, so, when they all gal- 



168 CAJVIPING OUT 

loped, I sent her along, reaching out for all she 
was worth and changing stride every few mo- 
ments, so I had to re-post to get in swing with 
her; but, by keeping the quirt whirling (yet never 
touching her with it) I soon had the fear of God 
into her and she went right along. 

That marvellous character, Nicky, soon devel- 
oped another admirable trait, — that of fruit- 
hound. Such a nose for fruit as that boy had, the 
farms of south Jersey this side of the pines will 
testify, for he left a desolation in his wake equal 
to Sherman's through Georgia. Joan and Billy 
led the march, of course, for one of Billy's fe- 
tishes is never to let any other horse pass him! 
and, as Dwight's mount was a fast one, they were 
in impromptu races most of the time. Nicky's 
also had speed and was a good rider, so that bunch 
kept pretty well together, with me pounding along 
in the rear on my huge white cart-horse. 

After some fifteen miles of farms we at length 
reached the pines and were soon dashing along 
through forest roads that led deliciously nowhere 
in particular, but, so long as they led south, we 
followed them. Finally we reached the Manas- 
quan Elver just as the sun was setting in gor- 
geous autumn colours over its wide waters. A 
short canter across the upper bridge and a WL»d- 



HORSEBACK CAMPING 169 

ing trail through the pines, and we arrived at my 
old camp site opposite Turkey Point, now revis- 
ited after fourteen years. Nothing was changed ; 
the trees were a few shades stouter, the bushes a 
bit thicker than when I camped here fourteen 
years ago when writing ' ' Camp Fires of an Epi- 
cure" (which all the older readers of Field and 
Stream will recall) ; otherwise nothing was 
changed, such is the repose of the wilderness. A 
high bluff looked out over the Manasquan, and a 
small brook leading out of a swamp near by sup- 
plied water. We cut a long pole and tied it hori- 
zontally between two trees for a horse stand, and 
to it we tethered the cayuses, each with his own 
halter, while each was given a feed of oats out 
of an army feed bag by Dwight. I had an old 
canvas water bucket, which was voted to the 
horses' use, the saddles were taken off and piled 
and their blankets dried of sweat before a roar- 
ing camp fire. As darkness fell the blankets were 
thrown over the horses and buckled on, and they 
were ready for the night. Seldom does a horse 
lie down on the march; even in their stalls they 
will sometimes go for several days standing up 
all night and munching haj. Joan gathered some 
fresh grass for them from a little clearing in the 
pines, while I put up our tent between two trees. 



170 CAMPING OUT 

Soon the various individual messes were toward 
• — Nicky with his canned alcohol (in a canvas 
bucket, which promptly caught fire), D wight and 
I over beds of coals raked out from the main fire. 
I set out, for Joan and myself, chops, creamed 
potatoes, bread and butter, tea and oranges. After 
which we had the usual two hours of loafing, 
smoking, singing and story telling before the 
bright camp fire, so dear to campers, and then 
to bed at ten. Such a sleep, with the keen north- 
west wind soughing through the pines ! 

Next morning we fed and grazed the horses, 
packed up the outfits and pushed on southward 
into the pines. Our road finally petered out in a 
cranberry bog and for two hours we went by map 
and compass over wonderful pine barrens inter- 
sected with cedar swamps and strewn with rich 
huckleberry patches, at each one of which Nicky 
was first out of the saddle. Dwight led the way 
at this time, his long figure, with blue-devil tam- 
o'-shanter and yellow cavalry scarf, a picture to 
look upon. 

Lunch, in a beautiful pine grove somewhere up 
on the headwaters of the Metedeconk, and soon 
thereafter we hit a regular forest road and the 
horses broke into a gallop. Mile after mile we 
covered until we rode into Point Pleasant and 



HORSEBACK CAMPING 171 

crossed the Manasquan again at its lower bridge. 
This was too much civilisation for Nicky, and, as 
soon as the bridge was behind us, we sought the 
forest roads again. Thence into the farm country 
of the Shark River (you simply must keep big 
bodies of water in mind because horses require 
bridges to cross) and by sundown we were five 
miles from home and out in the farming district 
again. An hour after dark we pulled into the 
homestead grounds, and tied the horses to trees. 
They should rest an hour or so before getting 
any feed or water, but by eight o 'clock Billy was 
up to his ears in oats and hay ; and so ended a per- 
fect hike. 

Horseback camping is in a class by itself, for 
pleasure and intimate acquaintance with the coun- 
try one passes through, without the fatigues of 
back packing, and my rede to any sportsman who 
wants the fullest measure of enjoyment of the 
game lands back of his home is to try the ancient 
and well-approved plan of owning a horse. 



CHAPTEE ^^11 

WTLDEEXESS GUIDE POSTS 

The fact of getting lost is one of those things 
that are occasionally thmst on one ; bnt the art of 
getting found again is not to be acquired, except 
with considerable intelligent study of the wilder- 
ness and its ways. And in no other department 
of the great outdoors are there so many ancient 
and hoary superstitions extant as in the printed 
directions on the art of getting found. The poor 
novice is told about the moss on the north side 
of trees (copied from French and English works), 
as the moss is green and prominent on the north 
side in rainy countries like France, but it cer- 
tainly isn't here, where in the forest all tree 
trunks are shaded alike. We learn that it is easy 
to start a fire with your watch crystal filled with 
water to make a lens, the author sublimely ignor- 
ing the sun's declination, and assuming that a 
level watch crystal will focus a point instead of a 
cusp, which it actually does, as the writer would 
know if he had only tried it. We read how to steer 

172 



WILDERNESS GUIDE POSTS 173 

a line by compass through the woods, when no 
timber cruiser would think of doing such a thing 
because of terrain impracticabilities, and so on 
ad. lib. Some one got it into print in a sporting 
work of the vintage of 1849, and each writer cop- 
ied him implicitly, without taking the trouble to 
check up the facts. 

Too few real woodsmen, alas! can put pen to 
papers so that he who reads gets the idea. It is an 
art born of long experience in the technique of 
writing. Give the woodsman half an hour in the 
woods to show you personally, and he will teach 
you so that you will never forget, but, aside from 
a few writers who really live in the forest, such 
authors as Kephart, Gilman, Breck and their kind, 
we have too little of the lore of the woods written 
by the woodsmen themselves. The following 
screed is a humble contribution by one whose ex- 
perience is far from wide, yet who, too, has the 
boon of a forest surrounding him all the days of 
his existence. 

The knack of woods travel is partly based on 
broad rules which can never be violated with im- 
punity, and partly on the ability to make averages. 
Your guide posts are many, and they consist in 
little things that to an observant eye are signifi- 
cant, and to the careless one a sealed book. Your 



174 CAMPING OUT 

true woodsman has his guide posts all about him 
and is never at a loss for signs of direction. If 
they are absent he begins to worry, nor is he at 
ease until they are his again. The novice tries to 
follow out to the letter the things he remembers 
reading in a book ; the woodsman passes sublimely- 
over a dozen printed rules for every mile that he 
travels. For example, you rarely see a lost woods- 
man attempting to follow a brook, even when he 
knows it is going where he wants to arrive. He 
may keep in touch with it, but, follow it — never ! 
AVhy! Because he is sticking to one of the big 
broad rules that you cannot break with impunity, 
and that one is to keep to high ground when trav- 
elling a trailless woods. He knows that even a 
wide detour will pay, in the long run, because 
brook bottoms, swamps and other low ground, 
where vegetation is thick and vines numerous, 
spell hard going and slow progress. When you 
are just mooching along, headed for a lake in the 
forest six miles away to the northwest, you do 
not set a compass course and steer yourself by 
it like a ship. That is sure to drag you through 
swamps, force you to scale precipices and run 
you into windfalls and scraggs without number, 
for all these things are plentiful in any six miles 
of wooded and hilly country in which your feet 



WILDERNESS GUIDE POSTS 175 

may find themselves. In making such a trip the 
compass or a sun bearing is essential, and, hav- 
ing laid it, your first care will not be to start out 
in that direction, but rather to pick out a promi- 
nent landmark in that direction, as far ahead as 
you can see. Anything will do : a ridge of cedars, 
a bold escarpment of rocks, a notable dead or 
large tree — something prominent and easily rec- 
ognised is what is wanted, and then you set out to 
travel to it. When you arrive there it will be time 
to pick out something else ahead on your bearing 
line, for you will be on your direct course again. 

All right ; this lake that we have set out for is 
six miles off, and from where we stand it must be 
beyond that third range of green ridges which 
look so distant and far away from here. Six 
miles is considerable distance, and a lot of things 
can be packed in between. Here is a valley below 
us to cross, and yonder is a lone pine nearly on 
the northwest bearing line as we sight it over our 
compass. What is the easiest way to cross this 
valley? At once we lose immediate interest in 
that tiny distant tree, and concentrate on a cam- 
paign to cross the valley. To plunge right down 
will land us in that swamp below, which is an 
excellent place to get lost in, but, by skirting along 
this flank to the right we see a low saddle which 



176 CAMPING OUT 

looks as if it would get us over easiest. And so, 
an hour later, we are standing at the foot of our 
pine. Nothing ahead but trees for a bit, but, 
by running a line across this promontory of tim- 
ber we shall come out where the land falls away 
again and can get a look-see. To cross it true 
and fair to the northwest, we spot a blazed tree, 
a crooked one, a dead one, any old tree so long 
as it is recognisable from the others on our bear- 
ing line, just as far ahead as we can see through 
the timber, and walk to it. Then another, and 
so on until at last the ground begins to fall. Now 
we cannot see anything, as the tree-tops below are 
in the way. Look for a jut-out rock near by; if 
no-can-do, look for a windfall, or the easiest tree 
to climb, and up we go, for it is essential not to 
go down into the valley below without a bearing 
lookout across to something recognisable on our 
line ahead. Yes, sir, the shinny is the thing — 
what's the word, aloft? There's a bare spot with 
a bold rock escarpment on the line on the ridge 
opposite (or maybe it's a quarter mile to one side 
it and we can correct when we get there), and 
there's a small pond in the valley below. Which 
end shall we go around? Swamp at both ends; 
all right, take the upper, it'll be the less pestifer- 
ous, unless the pond has a backwater. If it has, 



WILDERNESS GUIDE POSTS 177 

better chance the lower end, as it may work out 
through a natural dam and we will have only a 
narrow ravine to face. And so we descend, and 
for the next hour we are busy in getting across, 
only keeping a general N. W. direction in mind. 

Arrived at the ridge we soon locate the bare 
spot and are ready for the next adventure. A 
reconnaissance shows a wide plain of brush forest, 
intersected with brooks and ravines ahead, and 
beyond that another blue ridge, beyond which 
mitst be the lake, for it is about six miles from our 
starting point and we have come about three so 
far. By skirting the ridge we are ob we can gain 
part of the way on high ground, after which we 
must plunge down into the low ground; so while 
we are up here let's make a rough map of it and 
pick out the likely going, for it will be easy to get 
lost and off our line down there. And, finally, we 
spot a landmark on the distant ridge near the 
bearing line, for we will want to look for it later. 
A little pencil sketch of that ridge will help some 
when we come to look at it closer, for it is easy to 
forget — at least one member of the party is sure 
to and put up an argument, and the only thing for 
a stubborn man who is wrong is a sketch or a map 
made on the spot to show him later. 

Even a mountain flank is full of ravines and 



178 CAMPING OUT 

temptations to work downhill, and thisyou counter- 
act by the general rule of taking the higher of 
two given courses that present themselves, unless 
there happens to be some very good reason to the 
contrary. In the low country keep to the better 
going as much as you can, and lay little courses 
to cross cedar swamps and the like, for in there 
you will not be able to see twenty yards ahead. 
A compass or the sun is invaluable here. Once I 
paralleled a stream down the swamp along its 
side for nearly an hour, under the leadership of a 
native guide, and when he finally gave it up I led 
him out in ten minutes by compass, simply setting 
my course at right angles to the known general 
direction of the stream. When I first set out he 
thought I was wild and refused to follow, and so 
I left him there, hallooing him out when I struck 
high ground. 

To return to our lake hunt; when you get to 
the slopes of the distant ridge, better climb a tree 
or a knoll to get a good look at it close up or there 
will be nothing recognisable on it as you ascend 
until you are nearly at the top, when it may be 
too late to find your bearing landmark. Once 
there the rest is plain sailing; up over the ridge, 
and then look for the white mirror of the lake be- 





BLAZED STAKE, THE BEST IN 
ROCKY COUNTRY 



I.OB-TREE, MARKING PORTAGE OR 
BEGINNING OF FOREST TRAIL 





CACHE OR TRAP BLAZE 



CORNER BLAZE AT TURN 
OF TRAIL 



WILDERNESS GUIDE POSTS 179 

low, for it should be by now in plain sight from 
any ontlook point. 

Such is woods travel by compass ; how about it 
without a compass? 

The pert answer is, of course, that experienced 
woodsmen do not travel without compasses. 
Quite so ; not willingly ; but then it sometimes gets 
left in camp, unless you carry it in your trousers 
watch pocket as I always do, for many's the time 
I have gotten off for the day's hunt to find the 
compass left behind in Mackinaw or vest pocket, 
either of which garments are quite often left in 
camp, depending on the weather conditions. 
Even with the sun shining it is not all roses to 
cruise without a compass. Old Sol looks different 
at different seasons of the year, and, in midwin- 
ter you need to know the time accurately to 
steer by him at all. During the hunting months 
of October and November the sun is well south 
and has a very low arc, with maximum declination 
so that he really only travels from S. E. to S. W. 
during the part of the day when he is visible above 
the trees. I've seen a whole party in November 
steer nearly south at ten in the morning in the 
misunderstanding that they were steering nearly 
east because they were travelling into the sun. 
The compass soon showed them that they were 



180 CAMPING OUT 

travelling only a few points to the east of south. 
During the fishing months the sun is in the east 
around six to seven a. m., and describes a great 
arc overhead during the day, being nearly ver- 
tically overhead at noon, and this is the only time 
that it would be possible to start a fire with your 
watch crystal. You can then tilt it enough to get 
the face normal to the sun and focus the rays in 
a hot point. It may be hot enough to then start 
a fire — IVe never tried it then — ^but I do know 
that any other time of the year the rays form a 
cusp, with a point hardly warm to the hand, and 
that if you try to tip it so as to get the rays con- 
centrated into a single point the water will be 
tipped out of your crystal. However, I never 
have a watch in camp, and if I needed a fire by 
sun glass would most certainly unscrew my cam- 
era lens and have one ! 

When you have one of those grey days and have 
the adventure of getting lost, the first thing to 
find is a landmark that you can recognise. Get 
to a high point and take a look-see, for you may 
pick up something that you know of old and then 
set sails for it, when all will be lovely again. Fail- 
ing in this, the first thing to find is, not north, 
but south. Nature does not seem to be interested 
in pointing out north to any one, but Old Sol has 



WILDERNESS GUIDE POSTS 181 

left many traces of where lie has shone and where 
he has not. In the dense forest there has been no 
sun; everything is shade — north, east, south and 
west alike^so look up, first of all, a cleared spot, 
a mountain meadow or the bed of a brook. Weeds 
■vvill be thick on the south side of boulders, and 
scrawny or absent on the north. Moss will be 
green on the north side and burnt on the south of 
brook boulders, and all vegetation will be thick 
where the sun has shone hotly, and scanty where 
the shade has been. Averaging up a lot of these 
will give you some tolerable suspicions as to where 
south is located. Then verify by the wind. In 
the eastern states grey days are when the wind is 
northeast or southeast, and thundershowers over- 
casting the sky when the wind is southwest; if 
northwest it will be sunny, sharp and cold, and 
will not change during a temporary overcasting 
of the -sky. The wind should check up with the 
shady and sunny spot indications. Then come 
the trees ; a sweet gum will have its burrs strewn 
to the northeast of the parent tree, and a flock of 
little ones will be growing up in the area north- 
east of the tree. Hemlocks generally have their 
tips to the northeast ; both trees for the same rea- 
sons, viz., that the prevailing summer wind is 
southwest. Some time spent in averaging up in- 



182 CAMPING OUT 

dications will give you enough certainty of south 
to go on ; and, having settled on it, do not rush off 
and lose it again (for, once lost, you can lose your 
sense of direction again in twenty minutes), but 
locate a prominent landmark, and when you feel 
in doubt again look for the landmark — a moun- 
tain head, a peculiar range, anything high and 
conspicuous, no matter what its bearing. 

Man himself has left a lot of wilderness sign 
posts, the best known of them being the blazed 
trail. In general they are laid out by blazing 
trees with the axe, each blaze being easily seen 
from the last one; but do not imagine that they 
will be like a lot of lamp posts on a street. The 
man who made them proceeded in this way: He 
wanted to get along in a certain direction, and he 
went partly by compass, partly by the woods sense 
of taking the easiest possible course and keeping 
along at about the same level. As he made each 
blaze, he spotted another tree ahead in the line he 
wanted to go, walked to it and made another blaze. 
Some of them only look one way ; most of them are 
double-blazed, so as to be readable either way 
from the same trees, and some of them are blazed 
on different trees when coming from the opposite 
direction. In following them, therefore, do not 
abandon a blaze until you have located the next 



WILDERNESS GUIDE POSTS 183 

one, and do not take a piece of spalled bark for a 
blaze, nor kid yourself into thinking that the 
woodsman used any spalled bark marks in laying 
out his line, for without the axe mark a blaze is 
no good. To mark a cache, a trap or a turn or 
angle in the trail, two blazes, one below the other, 
are the general indication, but examine these with 
common sense, for one of them may be merely an 
imperfect blaze and the other the only one the 
forester wanted to make. When you get to stony 
ground, as often happens in mountain trails that 
rise occasionally above timber line, one style of 
marking, and the best, is the blazed stake. Not 
so good because not so easily discerned, is the 
stone cairn ; and at the turns, there will be two of 
them laid comerwise. Seldom do you see a single 
stone or two of them one atop the other, as shown 
in the books, as these are too hard to locate and 
too apt to be a happenstance. On the prairie the 
trail, even if very faint, can be located by the dif- 
ferent appearance of grass from an untrodden 
stretch of bunch grass. If even two horses have 
passed that way you will know it by a glance along 
the line of the trail ; a faint but unmistakable trail 
has already been formed. Occasionally, to be sure 
of it, the weeds are bunched and the tips tied in a 
knot, so you can be sure it was the work of man's 



184 CAMPING OUT 

hands. Blazing a tree or bush along the prairie 
trail is better, for there are plenty of them about, 
and a blazed or lopped bush is conspicuous a long 
way off. 

For wilderness signals, three of anything means 
Lost! or Danger! Help! Three gunshots, three 
smudges, three fires at night mean some one lost 
or in trouble with broken leg or ankle, and you 
to the rescue, as you may need to make one of 
these signals yourself some day. The cowboy yell 
or halloo carries a good way, and is, of course, 
your first recourse before wasting any ammuni- 
tion, and, if you have a shotgun, you can blow a 
moot of the horn on it that can be heard a long 
way off. All Southerners know this trick. The 
gun is emptied, and, with the lips over the muzzle, 
a typical bugle blast is blown. It gives a pene- 
trating moot, very like that of the horn, and any 
one that can blow a horn can blow a gun barrel. 

It might not seem that star knowledge is very 
necessary to a woodsman, but it is a fact that you 
need to know at least half a dozen constellations as 
night guide posts. I have travelled four miles 
through the Southern cane brakes at night by com- 
pass and carbide lamps, striking a road near camp 
only a few hundred yards above camp at the end 
of the march. We travelled by avoiding the cy- 



WILDERNESS GUIDE POSTS 185 

press swamps at the expense of several long de- 
tours. Every one was lost, niggers and whites 
alike, but the compasses brought us out all right. 
We picked out dark extra-black clumps of trees 
ahead along the bearing line and marched to them, 
no matter what the detour, again setting our 
course for the next landmark on arrival at the 
one set out for. 

But about a year ago I got lost on a starlit 
night in November in the easiest way imaginable. 
I went out from camp with the water pail, and it 
was quite a way through woods and swamp to the 
river bank. After filling the pail I started back. 
No camp-fire in sight. Nor did one appear after, 
maybe, fifteen minutes ' walking. I had a compass, 
but no light to see it by, but I hardly gave it a 
thought. My first look-see was for a star that I 
could recognise. Now don't imagine that the Big 
Dipper or the Pole Star was the one that would be 
useful, for in November at 9 p. m. the Dipper is 
way down below the tree Hne, and not to be seen 
unless you have a clear horizon. The Pole Star 
was somewhere to the north and below the tree 
tops, so that it could not be seen without climbing 
a tree. Orion was not up yet; what would you 
have done? Well, I wanted to go southeast to 
reach camp, and trusted that I would pass within 



186 CAMPING OUT 

range of its ruddy glow, and I wanted a big star 
to the south to steer by, so I looked for my old 
friend Vega in the constellation Lyra. It is a 
small constellation, like a lozenge or diamond, 
with the brilliant blazing star Vega in the south 
tail of the lozenge, and it is always somewhere 
overhead and the whole constellation easily seea 
through the tree tops. At 9 p. m. on November 1st 
Vega is overhead in the southwest, and, once find- 
ing her, all I had to do was to walk at right angles 
to Vega's bearing to go a true southeast — and 
soon I passed the camp-fire less than fifty yards 
away! Lyra is one of the woodsman's constella- 
tions, very handy all through the summer months, 
easy to remember, and small ; some of them take 
up so much room that they are very hard to make 
out through the trees. And do not depend on any 
of the planets to steer by, as they change con- 
stantly from year to year, but a good constella- 
tion is just as good by night as the sun is by day. 
Every one, of course, knows the Big Dipper; 
but they do not realise that he turns about the 
Pole Star (as do all the rest of the constellations 
and the sun himself) and, as the Dipper is nearest 
to the Pole Star he does queer antics, and you may 
find him in almost any position in the northern 
heavens. When he is lying flat, parallel to the 



WILDERNESS GUIDE POSTS 187 

horizon, most of him is out of sight. The trees, 
or even a low range of hills, will hide him com- 
pletely. If there is any mist the Little Dipper will 
be hard to pick out, and the Pole Star, being the 
end star in the Little Dipper's tail, will be hard 
to locate unless you happen to know north. If 
you can see the Big Dipper, follow the pointers 
and the Pole Star will be a trifle off their line no 
matter in what position the Dipper happens to be. 
But the big overhead constellations are more 
practical. Lyra, Cygnus and Pegasus form a 
grand chain across the heavens during the sum- 
mer night, while Orion, the Charioteer and Gem- 
ini are the glory of the winter skies. Orion be- 
ing the most familiar is the easiest to steer by, 
and of course, like the sun, it is just as easy to tell 
time by the constellations at night as it is by the 
sun in the daytime. In January he is '* up" by 6 
p. M., and then makes about the same time as the 
sun does, being about the same position at 4 a. m. 
as the sun is at 4 p. m. In June and July, Lyra, 
or rather the star Vega (the other four stars 
simply serving to identify it), gets up at 6 p. m. 
and is visible by 8, well above the eastern horizon ; 
is overhead by 12 p. m., and well down to the west 
by 4 A. M. With these two constellations I can 
tell the time of night just as accurately as with 



188 CAMPING OUT 

the sun by day, a useful thing to know when you 
have some early rising to do in camp for hunting 
before dawn. 

And, speaking of telling time by the sun, it can 
be told very accurately by the compass and sun, 
using the reverse of the old rule ''Half way be- 
tween the sun and twelve o'clock is south." After 
a few days in the woods every one 's watch has run 
down, and I never carry one anyway, so it is sel- 
dom that I am interested in the time of day 
within 15 minutes of right. But once we had to 
catch a train from a point four miles in the woods 
from a railroad, and so dug up the time by com- 
pass, and — caught the train by one minute! The 
method we used was this : Cut a small straight 
twig and lay it across the face of your compass. 
Aim the twig at the sun, with the inner end of it 
just over the central dial of the compass. Now, 
with the south end of the needle steady, adjust 
the compass card until the needle just bisects the 
angle between the twig and the point S on the dial. 
Half way between the sun and twelve o'clock is 
south. The angle therefore between your twig 
and S is the same as the hour angle between the 
time of day and twelve o'clock. The rest is easy. 
Suppose it is three o 'clock in the afternoon ; S to 
W is the same distance on the dial as 12 to 3, and 



WILDERNESS GUIDE POSTS 189 

you will find that the twig will be lying right over 
W when pointed at the sun at 3 o'clock if the 
south end of the needle is bisecting the angle be- 
tween S and W. 

It's a good stunt to know when you are out 
shooting or fishing without a watch and want to 
get back to lunch on time. 

The compass itself is deserving of some fussing 
over by the crank woodsman. Whether to have a 
luminous dial, a floating card, or a fixed card and 
free needle are all points to be considered. The 
card compass is easy to steer by if it has a rhumb 
line; simply get your bearing angle and turn 
yourself to keep the rhumb line on it. With a fixed 
card and floating needle the instrument makes a 
pretty fair rough surveying instrument with 
which you can measure the distance across a lake 
or river by a base line and two angles taken from 
the compass. With mine I have come out quite 
near the results of later measurements taken with 
a regular transit. With this style of compass be 
sure to scratch on the case ''Black is North" for 
you would not believe how people can quarrel with 
a simple fact like that until they get lost. Even a 
man tenderfoot can be bluffed into believing that 
black is south when he is in the semi-panic of be- 
ing lost. 



190 CAMPING OUT 

Another curious psychological fact is that mere 
man is prone to quarrel with the bearings of any 
single compass, but will always believe two of 
them. I know one man who always takes two for 
that very reason. When he gets lost he trots out 
No. 1, quarrels with it instanter, and, after veri- 
fying with No. 2, he decides to bow to the will of 
the majority and believe them both. In every 
party both the sun and the compass will be quar- 
relled with until at least two compasses have been 
set side by side and compared, all rifles being 
most carefully stood behind trees so as not to 
affect the precision. At that, a compass carried 
anywhere but in one's breeches or boot leg is no 
compass at all, for like the Dutchman's anchor it 
is otherwise at home ! 



CHAPTER IX 



A GO-LIGHT BEACH HIKE 



Over the Fourth the combination of dates often 
gives four holidays in a row, and, as such an op- 
portunity is not to be lightly wasted, my boy and 
I planned a raid on North Point, Barnegat, from 
Seaside Park. It is ten miles from the rails any 
way you try to reach it. The best way of all is 
with a light sail-dory, with cockpit tent in which 
you can camp at night, and an alcohol galley so as 
to cook your meals on board out of the blowing 
wind and drifting sand. 

Another way to reach North Point, which we 
have tried before, is by small batteau, taking 
along a beach camping outfit. This is mere labour 
in mild weather, but it is a sure misery when 
heavy head winds force you to go overboard and 
push the boat bodily against the wind every step 
of the way. A third way is to hike along the 
beach. You have actually a little over eight miles 
to go, since your nearest water is the Forked 
Eiver Life Saving Station, near which, of course, 

191 



192 CAMPING OUT 

you should camp for water, walking the remaining 
two miles with surf rod alone to get your fishing. 
If your pack is light, say, not over 27 pounds, 
and you choose a low or mid-tide so that you can 
walk on the hard, firm sand of the surf wash, this 
method is one of the nicest and most independent 
of all, for head winds cause you no concern and 
you can stop and fish every likely hole all the way, 
making a sort of Progress, as it were, towards 
the Point, arriving not at all if the fishing above 
proves good enough. 

Now, in midsummer you have considerable lati- 
tude as to the make-up of your pack. There is 
no irreducible minimum of bedding that must be 
carried to keep you warm; for fall, spring and 
winter camping the packsack sleeping-bag, with 
its combined warmth and efficiency as a pack, pins 
you down to it as a first consideration. In the 
summer a single blanket suffices, and you can cut 
a few spreads on the choice of tent and such com- 
forts all inside that 27 pounds of weight. Grub 
weight in any season seems to be irreducible, un- 
less you take preserved, concentrated and dehy- 
drated explorers ' foods. My boy and I have found 
that 14 pounds of grub for the two of us for four 
days is just right and not to be reduced with 
ordinary grocery-store stock, and that weight con- 



A GO-LIGHT BEACH HIKE 193 

templates some of the fresh meat to be caught or 
shot, if we are to have plenty of meat. A three- 
quart, kidney-shaped tin beer-growler, in a can- 
vas pail that just fits over it and has a leather 
carrying-strap, is our container for two pounds 
of fresh steak, a pound of bacon and two small 
tin cans containing matches and coffee which just 
fit in one lobe of the kidney. This growler and its 
canvas pail are both promptly filled with water at 
the life-saving station pump when we pitch camp. 
The rest of our grub list is soon enumerated : one 
pound rice, eight large potatoes, four white 
onions, one-half pound commeal, small can evap- 
orated cream, one pound sugar, one-half pound 
butter, one-half pound lard, small sack salt, box 
bouillon cubes, a tin Colgate shaving-soap case 
filled with baking powder, 14 fresh eggs broken 
into a 3 X 5-inch friction-top can, small tin of tea, 
one-pound bag of mixed prunes and apricots, a 
handful of macaroni sticks — these about fiV the 
bill, which, by the way, comes to about $2, not bad 
for two people, for four days of good times — can 
you beat it with any hotel from Bar Harbor to 
Palm Beach? 

The rest of our cook-kit consists of the boy's 
Stopple, my aluminum pan baker, a nine-inch 
folding fry-pan, two nine-inch aluminum eating- 



194 CAMPING OUT 

plates, knives, forks and spoons in the Stopple, 
and two 7 x 3-inch tin mixing-pans. This culinary 
outfit, of some three pounds' weight, suffices for 
us and leaves us some little choice for a tent. This 
time I decided to experiment with a new one, 
called the Appalachian by its makers. It is a 
packsack tent, its bottom cloth being 4x7 feet, of 
heavy brown paraffined duck canvas, and the rest 
of the tent is a sort of pyramidal "forester" of 
the lightest paraffined green fabric, provided with 
a bobbinet mosquito front and a little window in 
the back wall for ventilation, also barred with bob- 
binet. This tent weighs eight pounds and is car- 
ried by stout canvas straps secured to the ground 
cloth. Folding the green part of the tent inside 
and doubling over the sides of the brown part, you 
come to a line of grommets by which the brown 
tent bottom can be doubled over and laced up to 
make a pack, similar to the packsack sleeping- 
bag devised by the writer, with which my readers 
have become tolerably familiar. 

This tent looked like quite a good beach propo- 
sition for two. It was mosquitoproof and wind- 
proof, and not likely to be blown down or blown 
to ribbons by the heavy gales which howl across 
the beaches at night. Its ground cloth, with high 
front sill, appealed to us as compared to the for- 



•*^?«^j^ir 




THE APPALACHIAN TENT AS A PACKS.4 



i 



f 



■^_ 




SETTING IT UP AS A TENT 



A GO-LIGHT BEACH HIKE 195 

ester tent, without any ground cloth, and the per- 
fect shelter tent, with neither ground cloth nor 
sides, for the latter is cold and draughty if the 
wind shifts during the night and comes in on the 
unprotected side of the tent. We did not mind 
the eight pounds' weight, for it could be compen- 
sated for by taking a single mackinaw blanket 
apiece, making the load for a blanket and tent 13 
pounds against seven for the packsack sleeping- 
bag plus four for the perfect shelter tent. 

So, with the grub divided so that the Kid had a 
17-pound pack and I a 27-pound one, we breezed 
along the beach at sun up from the Seaside Park 
boardwalk. Just to be free again was joy enough. 
Nothing to do but camp and fish for four days ; 
no cares and no worries, no house to run, no job to 
chase — that was enough for me for the present! 
The wind blew keen and salt off the ocean, and the 
kindly sun was just high enough to warm us. We 
aimed to hike down to our old fishing-hole at the 
Island Beach station and fish there during the last 
half of the flood tide, also during the heat of the 
day. We hit up a good clip along the hard-packed 
wash, now and then running up to dodge the 
waters, and in three-quarters of an hour had 
made the Hole. The last time we fished it, it was 
alive with flounders, and so now our mouths wa~ 



196 CAMPING OUT 

tered to eat, for once, all the fish we could stuff! 
But, alas ! the sea had washed the Hole flat, and 
not a vestige of it was left. (Two months later 
the sea had restored this Hole again and we 
caught croakers out of it all day long — all we 
could carry.) 

We gave up the fishing as bad medicine by 
eleven o'clock and shook up a light lunch of steak, 
creamed potatoes and tea. Then we hit the sands 
for the next station, Cedar Creek, 31/2 miles fur- 
ther on, arriving about four o'clock and fishing 
every hole all the way down for a short time each. 
Nary a fish ! When our old friend, the huge dune 
at Cedar Creek, loomed up, we cast off our packs 
on a big wrecked spar and proceeded to unlace 
the tent packsack and stake it out on a nice level 
piece of sand. Meanwhile the Kid was getting a 
pair of shears, which were soon found in two bam- 
boo poles, and in a jiffy the tent went up. It re- 
quires a second set of stakes, to which the walls 
are guyed out, as its slope is not a plain wedge 
but a gambrel, like a wall tent. It made a snug 
little tent, warm and windproof, also flyproof, 
and we proceeded to keep sand out of it by laying 
a board platform in front of the sill so one's feet 
had time to shed sand before entering the tent. 
The blankets, pillows, night-socks and our coats 



A GO-LIGHT BEACH HIKE 197 

were hove into the tent and we were ready for the 
culinary department. Half a dozen driftwood 
boxes made a combined cupboard and windbreak, 
behind which the wire grate of the Stopple was set 
up, its quart pail put in the holder to boil for tea, 
the growler, with three quarts of mulligan, com- 
posed of chunks of steak, potatoes, onions, maca- 
roni and rice, was set on to boil, and I mixed up a 
fine combread batter in one of my mixing-pans, 
while the other had a charge of prunes and apri- 
cots. Soon the batter was in the aluminum bake- 
pan, and my undivided attention had to be given 
it. The stunt is to bake the cake without scorch- 
ing it, and for fifteen minutes you had best do 
nothing else but tend that cake! On top of its 
aluminum cover you want a healthy fire of brands 
and live coals ; under it nothing but glowing coals 
— no brands and no flame. Just maintain these 
conditions for fifteen minutes, scrape off the coals 
from the top, open up the cover and take a peek. 
She ought to be crisp and golden brown, with 
never a scorch on her. It is nearly impossible to 
do it with steel without scorching, but is easy with 
aluminum, since the conductivity of aluminum is 
three times that of steel, and no local scorching 
area of red-hot metal can form, as it does with 



198 CAJMPING OUT 

steel, over a hot flame. The metal conducts the 
heat all around the cake. 

All these matters went forward to a triumphal 
conclusion in about 35 minutes, and, as the sun set, 
we leisurely stowed away this notable feed. Then 
a wash-up, and we were ready for the fish, which 
were ready for us, for, with the rising tide and the 
coming of darkness, they began to bite and kept 
it up until midnight, as we fished by the light of a 
huge beach fire. This time the Cedar Creek hole 
was full of dogfish and skates, the former of which 
will fight and play as well as any of the smaller 
edible fishes, and we had great sport with them, 
although quite disappointed as to not getting that 
grand fish feed. 

And so to bed in the Appalachian, finding it 
warm and free from mosquitoes. But even in 
July at 4 A. M. the cold is too much for one blanket 
and we were awakened by the chill of the wee sma ' 
hours. We took the Kid's blanket out from under 
us and slept on the ground cloth — rather hard 
sleeping — but we were warm enough with the two 
blankets over us to be comfortable. It reminded 
me of old times, before I invented the paeksack 
sleeping-bag to warm my cold bones and yet not 
load me up with duffle like a moving-van. 

The next day we fished the bay, but it was too 



A GO-LIGHT BEACH HIKE 199 

early for the bay weakfish and no one caught any- 
thing, so we decided to try dogfish tails for dinner 
on the advice of the captain of the station. Cut 
off tail just back of the ventral fin, parboil 20 
minutes and fry as with any other fish. They 
tasted rather strong and rank, like shark smells, 
but, of course, were sustaining enough. The cap- 
tain also wanted us to boil and fry skate 's wings, 
which he declared tasted just like crab, but the 
dogfish was enough for us. Later I learned that 
nearly all the crab flakes, crab patties and devilled 
crab in the restaurants of New York are nothing 
less than skate's wings, boiled and dished to suit 
the chef. 

That evening my old chum, Westervelt, and his 
cousin Bert arrived, via batteau from Seaside 
Park, and . camped in their perfect shelter tent 
alongside us. That night the dogs and skates 
were on the job as indefatigably as ever, and we 
fished our fill, deciding to try Forked River next 
day. After a breakfast of fried eggs, bacon, 
coffee and cornbread we packed up the tent-pack 
and the Kid's side-opening pack and were off 
down the beach for Forked River, while Westy 
and his cousin paralleled us in the bay in their 
boat. Here we struck the edible fish, croakers, 
flounders and two small stripers coming to rod. 



200 CAMPING OUT 

Curiously enough, these were all taken on hard 
clam comb, from a dozen we had bought from 
the captain, squid bait drawing nothing but skates 
and dogs, as before. The following morning the 
beach flies of Forked River descended on us in 
myriads. They were simply cruel, and drove all 
hands into the surf. Here they followed us, and 
soon the party was completely routed, the Kid 
and I packing up and streaking along the beach 
for Seaside Park with empty packs, while Westy 
and his cousin took to their boat. We fished all 
the holes on the way back, but nothing bit during 
the daytime. 

The only one of us who really reached the 
Inlet over the Fourth was Joe Cawthorne, the 
famous comedian, who came over from Bamegat 
in a power boat and ran into a school of blues in 
the Inlet, taking them from eight to twelve pounds 
in weight — some fish ! 

The Appalachian is a good summer tent. In the 
daytime on the beach it is hot, as are all closed 
tents, so in pitching it see that it has shade from 
the sun. Made up as a pack, there is room enough 
inside it for all the duffle you can carry, and its 
carrying-straps are properly proportioned so that 
the load is not irksome nor binding to your shoul- 
ders. It hangs rather low, so that in winter, if I 



A GO-LIGHT BEACH HIKE 201 

were using one, I would have my eiderdown or 
wool quilt sleeping-bag rolled in a light, water- 
proof envelope and strapped on top of the pack, 
where it would just about come in the small of 
your neck. There is room in the pack for a single 
blanket plus provisions, but not for two blankets 
nor for any kind of quilt. Putting this latter on 
top, however, you have plenty room left inside for 
all the grub and miscellaneous duffle your shoul- 
ders will stand. 



CHAPTER X 

CAMP COOKING 

Really, the biggest difference between cooking 
at home and cooking on camp and trail is in the 
fire. At home your fire is a steady, strong heat, 
with no flame, an oven handy for baking, and, if 
it is a gas stove, you can regulate the quantity of 
the heat. In the woods the fire will be at one time 
all flame, another all coals, and, in the hands of 
tyros, mostly out ! A certain amount of system is, 
then, advisable in getting up a woods meal to fit 
the camp fire conditions, and an experience of 
some thirty years of camp life, when I have gen- 
erally been the cook of the expedition, leads me to 
set down here what I have found practical in get- 
ting results quickly. I lay my fire, — dry duff and 
twigs for a starter if the woods are dry; peeled 
birch bark, cedar bark and white pine shavings 
if they are wet, — and set alongside everything 
necessary to build it up complete; and, further 
than this, have my water in pots, mulligan stew 
essentials such as potatoes and onions, peeled; 

202 



CAMP COOKING 203 

rice in its pot, salted ; stewed dried fruits in theirs, 
sugared; everything ready before the match is 
applied. As soon as the blaze is assured, these are 
hung on the dingle stick or set on the wire grate, 
and they then get the full benefit of the high flames 
while the wood is burning down to coals. Mean- 
while I am at my breadstuffs, — corn bread batter, 
dough gods, squaw bread, etc., — and, when the 
batter or dough for these is ready, the fire is gen- 
erally less fierce and more tractable for baking, 
the pots are all boiling like fiends, and a few blaz- 
ing brands are available for high fires for the 
reflector baker or Dutch oven as the case may be. 
While the bread is baking I get at my fried work ; 
— elk steaks, fish, birds, — and set these over all 
the coals I can spare from the main fire. The fry- 
ing takes fifteen minutes, by which time the bak- 
ing is done, and the boiled foods, which generally 
take at least 35 minutes, are ready and grub is 
served hot and all finished at the same time. 

This is a good system to follow ; for, consider a 
meal in the woods strung along any old way by 
an amateur. He generally starts off with his fry- 
ing, when the flames are so high that everything 
gets scorched including his own fingers ; his pots 
are set in the back part of the fire where they get 
little heat and are forever in coming to a boil, and 



204 CAMPING OUT 

fifteen good minutes are gone before he can take 
his attention off the fry pans for an instant. 
Then a long wait while the bread is got ready, 
and another fifteen minutes baking it ; meanwhile 
the fried food is getting cold and indigestible. 
Finally he looks at the pots and notes that they 
have only just begun to boil, the rice is hard, the 
potatoes like rocks, — another long wait while 
everything else gets cold. The meal is generally 
eaten on the instalment plan, as the rest of the 
party is too hungry to wait any longer, and, when 
through, there is an empty feeling, as most of the 
boiled stuff was half done, the fried work taste- 
less, and the bread scorched. No, sir; system is 
the one thing to nail fast to in the woods ! 

Hardly less in importance is the kind of wood 
the fire is made of and the arrangement of it. 
Trash woods, such as pine, cedar, hemlock and 
balsam, blaze fiercely, with little heat, and yield 
a white, poor coal that is ashes in ten minutes. 
Good cooking woods, such as blackjack oak, birch, 
hard maple, pignut hickory and dead white oak, 
burn with an intensely hot flame that gets the pots 
boiling in a jiffy, and yield live coals that glow for 
hours, the least of which will keep a large pot sim- 
mering. 

The cook himself should never be required to 



CAMP COOKIXG 205 

rustle firewood and water; that job devolves upon 
some one else in the party, for he cannot leave his 
work of preparing and watching the meal, tending 
fire, and the like, to provide wood and water also. 
So, if your assistant presents himself with an 
armful of dead trash wood, make him do it over 
again and do it right. Steer him for the dead 
lower branches of the nearest oak, down limbs of 
a maple, some nice green or dry birch, and insist 
on having them. Meanwhile you pare the spuds, 
peel the onions, get out the rice and put it in its 
pail, and, by the time he is back with water, yon 
will have two pots of the meal ready. 

In building the fire, the handiest thing, espe- 
cially for a nomadic trip by canoe or horseback 
where you are travelling each day, is a light wire 
grate. Carry it in a khaki bag, so it will not get 
the rest of the duffle sooty. Stick its legs in the 
ground over the fire site, build up a grid of split 
blackjack oak billets with a kindling fire of small 
trash underneath, and set the pots on it as thick 
as they will go. For a noonday stop, where only 
two things are to be cooked, the dingle stick fire 
is the handiest to build. Cut a sapling about ten 
feet long, drive one end into the ground at a long 
slant, so that the dingle stick will lean out over 
the fire, cut two short forks about two feet long to 



206 CAMPING OUT 

support the inner portion of the stick, and hang 
the pails on the stick over the fire, which is gen- 
erally built between two short billets to concen- 
trate the heat under the pails. As each pail is 
added it bends the dingle stick down lower, so the 
best pothooks for it are those made of brass win- 
dow sash chain with a hook at each end. The 
chains are wound around the stick, with a pot bale 
in the lower hook, and the upper hook adjusts the 
height above the fire by putting it into whatever 
link of the chain will bring the height right. 

For a reflector baker fire you want a hot high 
flame, for a low fire will always burn the under 
side of the biscuits before the upper side browns. 
If you are using a wire grate, all you have to do 
is to steal a blazing log from under it and put it 
across one end of the grate, when its flame, plus 
the ones of the fire below, will give you a wall of 
flame about two feet high, in front of which you 
set your reflector baker with the biscuit or bread 
pans inside. If you have no grate, build a small 
backstop of billets about two feet long and two 
inches in diameter, five of them will do, slipped 
between pairs of stakes, and against this lean 
your sticks of trash wood Avith a kindling fire 
underneath. It will make a high-flaming, hot fire 



CAMP COOKING 207 

that will last about fifteen minutes, by which time 
your biscuits will have risen and browned. 

Again, if you have no wire grate for your main 
fire, a good substitute is the regulation wilderness 
camp fire, built with two stout stakes at each end 
of the fire and a cross pole. The drawings gen- 
erally show these with forked stakes, but practical 
woodsmen seldom take the time to hunt for a pair 
of forked saplings as they are hard to find and 
harder yet to drive. Instead we cut and drive two 
straight stakes and fasten on the cross pole with 
two bits of copper wire, carried along for that 
purpose. However, the time lost in building this 
fire does not begin to amend for the small extra 
weight of a mre grate, and I usually take the lat- 
ter even on a back-pack trip. By the time the 
cooks have gotten those stakes and cross pole up 
and ready for business, the old-timer will have 
had his whole meal half cooked ! 

Next in importance after a fire is something to 
cook the mess in. Woods travel conditions re- 
quire lightness and compactness. Heavy agate- 
ware utensils, tea pots and coffee pots of the home 
patterns, will not do; they weigh too much and 
take up too much room. The ideal cook kit, as 
worked out by modern outfitters, comprises a set 
of nesting aluminum pails, with mixing pans and 



208 CAMPING OUT 

fry pans whicli slip over the ends of the biggest 
pail, the whole going in a khaki bag or fibre case. 
These come in sets for from four people up to a 
large party of a dozen, and, for slender pocket 
books, the whole thing is gotten out in a good tin- 
ware of identical size but of tinned sheet iron in- 
stead of aluminum, and, of course, heavier. Alu- 
minum, however, makes the best camp cooking 
utensil, not only because it is light but because, as 
aluminum has four times the conductivity of steel, 
it will scorch things much legs easily, since the 
superfluous heat flows through the metal to cooler 
parts of the utensil instead of being concentrated 
in one spot where it must inevitably scorch what 
is inside unless constantly stirred. This is an 
important point for campers, as you are always 
getting some flame played on one spot by a single 
over-ambitious brand, and steel-ware or agate gen- 
erally scorches with such a flame, while aluminum 
will distribute its heat and save the dish. In these 
nesting aluminum sets the smallest pot is gen- 
erally for coffee and tea, provided with an inside 
strainer and a slight lip which does not prevent 
its nesting. In this can be carried the table ware, 
or else small provisions apt to get lost anjr^^here 
else. The next two larger pots are for cooking 
dried fruits and the boiled cereal, while the larg- 




THE FORESTER COOK KIT 



CAMP COOKING 209 

est, of maybe eight quarts capacity, is for the big 
stew of the evening, without which no camp meal 
is complete. Over the end of this big pot, which 
swallows all the smaller ones, are two shallow 
nesting mixing pans, for bread making and pre- 
paring sautes by inverting over the fry pans, 
and over the other end of the big pot you will 
find two steel fry pans with folding handles. You 
can thus bake, fry and boil, — without which triple 
capacity no cook kit is complete! 

For four persons or less we get the combina- 
tion aluminum and tinware kits, like the "for- 
ester," which has two 4-quart aluminum pots, con- 
taining a tin tea pail, mixing pans, baking pans, 
folding fry pans, etc., and, still smaller, for two 
men or a lone hiker, are the Stopple and Boy 
Scout kits, the former having two large tin cups, 
a quart tin pail, two long rectangular fry pans 
and a wire grate, weighing two pounds altogether 
and going in your pocket. With it I have pre- 
pared many a good feed for two, while the ''for- 
ester" is my standard for a party of four to six, 
using the larger sets for parties of eight to twelve 
people. Coffee and tea cups, however, should in 
all cases be of enamel ware as the aluminum cups 
are such good heat conductors as to scald your 
lips when your mouth can easily drink the liquid. 



210 CAMPING OUT 

With the cook kit provided for, the next thing 
is what foodstuffs to take along. There is no use 
lugging a lot of water in combination with vege- 
table fibre in the form of fresh vegetables and the 
like, when the mountain brooks and lakes are full 
of wet water. Every pound counts, particularly 
when there are portages, so we have to cut out 
many of the things used in the cuisine at home 
and take along dry foodstuffs that make many 
times their weight of cooked food when mixed 
with water and boiled or baked. However, this 
concentration may be overdone, so certain indis- 
pensable vegetables I generally take in small 
quantities, not to be eaten wholesale but as in- 
gredients in other larger affairs. Spuds and 
onions come under this head for me ; I do not take 
enough of them to have much fried or boiled po- 
tato, or creamed onions, but I do take enough to 
insure them in the stew every night, for what is 
a stew minus onion and potato 1 Particularly the 
festive mulligan! 

At the head of the staples I would put rice, 
flour and cornmeal. Rice is light, easily packed 
and carried, and makes about six times its weight 
of cooked food. Cornmeal is very compact, and 
sticks to your ribs long after any breadstuffs pre- 
pared from white flour have departed and left an 



CAMP COOKING 211 

emptiness to ache in the void, so com bread and 
com mush fried are two items that show up on 
the bill of fare at least once a day when on the 
trail. White flour is indispensable for biscuits, 
flapjacks, and squaw bread. These three staples 
are all you really need, but oatmeal is often taken 
because of its lightness, although very mussy to 
clean up after. All the predigested "breakfast" 
foods are "nix" on the trail, because no form of 
evaporated cow goes palatably with them; with- 
out fresh cream and milk they lose out. 

For accessories you need eggs, baking powder, 
salt, sugar, milk, cocoa, butter and lard. The best 
way to carry eggs is broken into a friction top 
tin can, a 5 inches x 3 inches diameter can holding 
fourteen fresh eggs. On a big trip a lot of them 
with their shells on can be carried in the biggest 
pots, buried in flour or commeal ; and a third way 
to take along eggs is in the desiccated egg pow- 
ders. The latter are mixed right along with the 
flour in corn bread, cakes, flapjacks, eta, and 
mixed with water for omelettes, scrambled eggs, 
and to roll fish in before frying. Baking powder 
goes best in its original can, so that it will not 
slack, and sugar goes in the paraffined muslin food 
bags, of which more later. Take lots of it, for the 
quantity of sugar that one craves in the woods is 



212 CAMPING OUT 

nearly double that of civilised conditions. It is 
heavy, but there is no making up for its absence. 
Milk comes in cans of evaporated cream, very 
handy and palatable in camp, and easily made into 
milk by adding water when making up batters, 
creamed vegetables and omelettes; it also comes 
in powdered form requiring a little time to mix 
with water and return to the liquid state. I pre- 
fer the can for table use and the powder for mix- 
tures that are cooked later. 

Cocoa in its original can, and served as the 
drink for the mid-day stop, very nutritious and 
bracing, a great pick-me-up and easily prepared. 
Add water and evaporated cream, sugar to taste, 
and cook twenty minutes no matter what the di- 
rections say. Butter and lard go best in friction 
top tins and both are sunk in the outlet from your 
spring when not in use. I take lard along as there 
is generally not enough of drippings from bacon 
and pork to make out, and about half a pound of 
it ekes out many a fry. 

This brings us to the meats. We generally fig- 
ure on one-third the meat supply being furnished 
by the rods and guns of the party, or else the 
country is not worth camping and travelling in. 
We take, then, bacon, of prime quality and well 
flavored so it is toothsome with fish or eggs ; pork 



CAMP COOKING 213 

that is pink and well streaked, used with beans in 
pork and beans baked, — also diced and served 
with boiled rice, — also as a frying addition to fish 
and game; then a side of dried codfish, which is 
wonderfully acceptable after the palate is tired of 
fresh fish and game ; and, as a final standby, dried 
elk, beef or pemmican to cut up and serve cold at 
lunches or to cut into the mulligan if the guns 
have had no luck. In addition I take a box of beef 
capsules as a flavourer of soups and stews, one 
cube to each man, and a few sticks of erbswurst 
or pea meal for an emergency ration and a soup 
stock. 

Finally, canned goods and dried fruits. You 
must have fruit in order to keep off constipation, 
and dried prunes, apricots and apples, with a 
pound or so of dates, fill the bill. Served as a 
pot-pourri or tutti-frutti, or served singly, these 
three fruits simply need addition of water and 
lots of sugar to make a most "eatinest" dish, and 
as a bowel regulator they are all fine. Jelly pow- 
der is also good ; comes in many flavours, is light, 
and quickly prepared, and I often take it along. 
Dates are fine for the mid-day snack, as they con- 
tain nearly as much protein as meat, and so stick 
to your ribs of a hard afternoon's ride, tramp or 
paddle in a way that earns your eternal gratitude, 



214 CAMPING OUT 

for there is nothing quite so forlorn as that en- 
tirely empty feeling when you have still miles to 
go and lots of work to do before you can eat again. 
As a helper in this emergency I take along a small 
bag of nut kernels, shelled almonds, hickory nuts, 
walnuts, pecans and Brazil nuts, all mixed in 
small crumbs, and a handful of these washed down 
with a gulp of water will put steel into your pad- 
dle when you think you are too feeble for another 
stroke ! 

For canned goods I have restricted the list to 
just beans, for some time past. The rest are fine, 
but can all be prepared just as easily from dry 
and light forms of the same things. But dry 
natural beans take two hours to do, and, unless 
you are at some base camp where you will not 
move much, it is hard to get two hours to do them 
in. The canned ones weigh somewhat more, but 
are ready for business at once. Just pour out 
into your baking pan, add a chunk of pork, bake 
fifteen minutes, and you have a world-beater camp 
dish, no less! 

The condiments, of course, will be tea, coffee 
and pepper. Tea you cannot do without. At 
night it is the most restful drink for tired and 
weary voyageurs that has ever been discovered. 
Get a brand whose leaves sink to the bottom of 



CAMP COOKING 215 

the pot when steeped, as then you can pour clear 
tea, free from leaves, out of an ordinary lipless 
and strainerless pail, with great eclat! Most 
people must have coffee for breakfast or the meal 
is a failure. I'm one of those people, and I take 
the coffee in a baking-powder can for small par- 
ties, or in a paraffined muslin food bag for a 
crowd where there will be many grabs to be dipped 
out to brew enough. Pepper takes little or no 
room, and flavours so many different kinds of eats 
that it is poor policy to leave it behind. Salt you 
will take more of than at home, as there will be 
fish and game to salt down and hides to cure. 

This winds up the ordinary grub list. Added 
to it are a lot of dehydrated foods, especially 
made for campers and explorers, and many of 
them will come in mighty handy. For instance, 
dried soup greens weigh nothing at all and a hand- 
ful of them added to a game soup, plus a few 
bouillon capsules, makes a gumbo that will be 
relished by the whole party and make no appre- 
ciable inroads on the grub pile. Mushroom, 
chicken, bean, pea, and oxtail soup powders are 
all good if you are careful to follow the directions. 
I have used them a good deal, and have seen many 
a meal spoiled by the cook trying to just stir them 
into a pail of hot water and let boil. Generally 



216 CAMPING OUT 

the contents cake on the bottom of the pail, and, 
what should have been a thick, mitritious pal- 
atable soup, becomes an indescribable brew with 
a cake of good powder burned to the pail bottom. 
But if you mix up the little cubes as directed and 
follow instructions you will get a soup for eight 
out of a 2-inch cube of powder that is amazingly 
good. On long trips where all sorts of emer- 
gencies are to be looked for, I would not be with- 
out a stock of these desiccated foods to fall back 
on, and use occasionally anyhow. I would not 
care for them as a steady diet, for no preserved 
foodstuff can equal fresh things. Raisins come 
under the same head. Served with rice as 
''speckled pup" they are good, also eaten occa- 
sionally as a mid-day fruit, but if you go at them 
constantly you will get intestinal upsets and not 
digest them, as they are so highly preserved as 
to be hard to assimilate. 

Finally wilderness foods. In addition to nuts 
and berries in generous quantities, the woods are 
full of tons of good food. The duck marshes from 
September on are heavy with wild rice, a bushel 
of which can be knocked into your canoe with a 
pair of sticks, trodden out in a hollow in the 
ground lined with your poncho, and the stick-like 
grains are eaten boiled like white rice but very 



CAMP COOKING 217 

much more tasty and palatable. The root of the 
yellow water lily makes a fine potato ; so does the 
Indian potato or wild sunflower root (Jerusalem 
artichoke), eaten raw or boiled; the beefsteak 
mushroom fried is as good as egg plant and more 
nourishing ; rock tripe, dried over a fire and boiled, 
makes a nourishing tasteful dish, particularly 
when served with sauteed game; two more good 
tubers for stews are the rooty tuber of the ground 
nut and the bulb of the wood lily ; and all the white 
oak family of acorns need but drying, powdering 
and leaching to make a good batter for flour cakes. 
It pays to get acquainted with these wilderness 
foods, for some day you may get lost and will need 
to subsist on them until you find your fellow men 
again. For emergency utensils, the log or birch- 
bark bowl with hot stones is the best boiling me- 
dium. I have boiled soup and tea in a birchbark 
bowl with a fire of live coals under it, but prefer 
the hot stones as surer and easier. It takes fif- 
teen stones the size of a hen's egg to do a quart of 
soup for twenty minutes. It will begin to boil at 
the fourth stone, and each one from that time on 
will keep it bubbling about a minute. Add water 
as it steams away, and return stones to fire for 
reheating. Quartz is the best material, and the 
stones should get white hot and fire clean, not 



218 CAMPING OUT 

sooty as they will be at first. I once boiled me 
an erbswnrst soup this way when lost in the for- 
est. It took me an hour to make a maple log bowl 
that held a quart of water, and, twenty minutes 
later, I was drinking the soup. 

I append herewith a unit grub list for two men 
for four days using the standard explorer's and 
hunter's foods. 

UNIT GRUB LIST 





2 Men 4 Days 


1 lb. 


bacon. 


1 lb. 


salt pork. 


1 lb. 


side codfish. 


1 lb. 


rice. 


V2 lb. 


butter. 


1/2 lb. 


lard. 


Va lb. 


coffee. 


1 small can evaporated cream. 


1 doz. beef capsules. 


1 lb. 


self-raising buckwheat flour. 


2 lbs 


. white flour. 


1 lb. 


cornmeal. 


1 lb. 


sugar. 


2 oz. 


baking powder. 


2 oz. 


tea (black Ceylon). 


2 oz. 


salt. 


1 doz. eggs. 


1 lb. 


prunes. 


1 lb. 


dates. 


1 lb. 


apricots. 


1 lb. 


cheese. 


1 lb. 


smoked beef. 



CAMP COOKING 219 

4 potatoes. 

4 onions. 

2 lbs. steak (until fresh game). 

1 can baked beans. 

W. H. M. 

Here are some menus made up from its ingredi- 
ents: Breakfasts: (1.) Coffee, stewed fruits, ba- 
con, flapjacks, fish, corn mush. (2.) Coffee, bacon 
and eggs, corn bread, prunes ''as is." (3.) Cof- 
fee, oatmeal, flapjacks, ''dope" and fried elk liver 
and bacon. 

Lunches: (1.) Cocoa, sliced cooked ham, cheese, 
raisins, nuts. (2.) Cocoa, graham crackers, dates, 
dried beef. (3.) Cocoa, nuts, raisins, crackers or 
Swedish wheat bread. You will note that these 
lunches are light yet nourishing, as there is no 
time of the mid-day stop to cook a big meal, nor 
do you want a big weight in your stomach to di- 
gest while on the trail or busy hunting or fishing. 
The Indian truly said, "No man can eat meat 
more than twice from sun to sun and keep healthy 
in mind and body." At four or five o'clock the 
party begins to look for a camp site or returns 
back to camp from the day's sport, and then 
comes the big feed of the day. Suppers: (1.) 
Tea, mulligan stew, rice, fish or game steaks, bis- 
cuits, fruit stewed. (2.) Tea, mulligan, elk steak. 



220 CAMPING OUT 

corn mush fried, squaw bread, ''speckled pup** 
(raisins and rice). (3.) Tea, mulligan, pork and 
beans, doughgods, fish, prunes. (4.) Tea, birds 
saute, creamed codfish, flannel cakes, jello. (5.) 
Tea, mulligan, roast wild duck, creamed potatoes, 
tutti-frutti, corn bread. 

Squaw bread and doughgods are both huge bis- 
cuits, mixed with a spoon with little or no han- 
dling once the dough is made, and the first is baked 
in the fry pan, bottom browned, then pan tipped 
up with a stick to brown the tops. Doughgods are 
baked in a Dutch oven or camp stove oven. For 
com bread my own recipe for four people is, II/2 
cups flour, 1 cup corn meal, one tablespoonful of 
baking powder, two tablespoonsful of sugar, one 
teaspoonful of salt. Mix; add a beaten egg, a 
thumb of butter melted, and enough milk water 
to make a thick, slow-pouring batter of it. Pour 
into baker pan, set in baker, and set before fire. 
For one or two men I make a recipe of one-third 
this size and pour into a little aluminum pan with 
cover and folding handle. This is set on the grate 
over a bed of live coals and a flourishing fire is 
built on the cover from brands stolen from the 
main fire. In fifteen minutes there will hop out 
of that pan a big cake of com bread that will be 
all that two men can guzzle ! I have also made it 



CAMP COOKING 221 

in this way with the steel pans of the Stopple kit, 
but you must watch your fire much more closely, 
owing to the tendency of steel to scorch. Seldom 
have I turned out a cake from those pans without 
at least one end of it burnt. 

The standard camp baker is the folding alumi- 
num, made by various companies in the form of a 
double reflector with closed ends and a rack to 
set the pans on midway between the reflectors. 
The pans are of black steel, and your biscuits, 
doughgods, corn bread batter, or roast 'coon, 'pos- 
sum or duck, go in the pan. If you manage the 
fire as described in the early part of this chapter, 
all will be well and you can see your baking rising 
and browning. 

A third popular baker, particularly in the West, 
is the Dutch oven. This is a heavy iron pot with 
a deep rim cover on which coals can be piled. It 
is a great baker, and will not scorch things easily. 
It is heavy and out of the question for back trips 
or portages, but where you are packing through 
the mountains with a train of horses it is the best 
bet, and no cowman or mountain man will be with- 
out it, any more than he would leave behind his 
can of log cabin maple syrup ! Still another good 
baker is the little oven found in most folding and 
non-folding camp stoves. These stoves are all 



222 CAMPING OUT 

light and easily carried by horse or canoe, and I 
have even gotten up one for back trips, for they 
are the only thing in winter camping when the 
blizzard is roaring outside the tent and cooking in 
a driving snow would be hard business. 

You will note in all these menus that there is 
not much frying. The fry pan is an excellent 
utensil, if judgematically used and you get your 
fat screeching hot before dropping in batter, fish 
or egg. Its purpose is to form an envelope of 
crisped food tight around the thing cooked, and 
this the hot fat, with its temperature of over 350°, 
lets you do. But if you put the fish in the grease 
cold, the fats penetrate to the innermost fibres of 
the food, making it all greasy and indigestible no 
matter how long you cook it afterwards. Balance 
your fried work with plenty of boiled and broiled 
stuff, and you will have no sickness and no head- 
axjhes in camp. 

Let us conclude with some observations on the 
mulligan. This is the camper's generic name for 
the big stew of the evening meal. Experienced 
men do not leave it out, for it is a great internal 
cleanser and regulator, besides being most easily 
digested. It is made of most everything shot dur- 
ing the day: grouse, fur, elk chunks, moose ditto, 
pieces of deer, a handful of rice, an onion sliced 



CAMP COOKING 223 

in for each man, a spud for each and a handful 
of dried soup greens. This invention is the first 
thing over the fire and the last to leave it, for the 
longer it cooks the better it gets. About six quarts 
for four men is about right, if the men are up to 
normal capacity (the mulligan always is). I usu- 
ally tip in a cube of beef capsule for each man 
just before serving. After the mulligan and hot 
bread are well stowed the party attacks the meat, 
rice, more hot bread, and tea, and when that is 
gone you lift off the fruit stew and set it in the 
snow to cool, and when that is down they are 
about ready for their pipes. Then the sleeping 
bags are unrolled, and soon the animals are snor- 
ing Kke majors and the mulligan is getting in its 
fine work. With that and the mountain air to see 
you through the night you will wake up next day 
with a fighting edge on and be ready to labour like 
a horse and so store up bodily health against the 
ravages of the mind when you get back to the wor- 
ries of business. 



CHAPTER XI 

OMAR, THE TENT MAKER 

If the Persian poet lived to-day he would be 
■ — an outdoorsman. He was more than a tent 
maker; he was a content maker, so to speak, for 
he had the true sportsman's code of enjoyment — 
pleasure and livelihood from the simplicities of 
nature. Not to quote the too well-known lines to 
the wilderness, the jug of wine and the book of 
verse, here is a quatrain typically Omarian, and 
not done to death : 

Waste not your Hour, 71 or in the vain pursuit 
Of this ayid that Endeavour and Dispute. 
Better he jocund, 'neath the trailing vine 
Than sadden after none or hitter Fruit. 

I feel a little diffident about talking tents, being 
somewhat of a tent crank myself, so that I look 
on all other designs with a yellow and a jaundiced 
eye. There are, however, other tents that I take 
off my hat to. My "forester" would hardly be 
ideal where three long slender saplings could not 

224 



OMAR, THE TENT MAKER 225 

be cut and where the desert thorn is the best 
apology for a tree that the locality can boast. 
Other climates, other tents. Many tents, espe- 
cially the immortal lean-to, have been provided 
by the makers with veranda flaps, because of which 
the tyro persists in sequestering the fire beyond 
the reach of mortal man. In point of fact under 
the veranda is just the place for a moderate cook- 
ing and heating fire. Then is the time the interior 
of the tent is damp and dreary and the fire should 
be doing his proudest to keep things warm and 
dry. The old chief and the writer once camped 
out in a villainous Nor'easter that filled the woods 
with wetness for a week. Did we close the flap 
and shiver in gloom inside! We did not. We 
spent the entire week before an imperishable 
Nessmuk fire, sitting in our shanty-tent in a con- 
tinuous orgy of poker playing, cooking and eating, 
varied only by periodic clubbings of a hound that 
would try to purloin our ham. An argument often 
urged against a night fire is that it spells hard 
labour. Let me imbed this in thine ear like a 
camp pillow — it takes just twenty logs of five- 
inch timber to take you through an entire October 
night!. Many's the time I've cut those logs with 
a 2 lb. camp axe at the witching hour of five, 
and never yet have I spent a chilly night, rain 



226 CAMPING OUT 

or shine. You put on six when you turn in at 
ten, six when you wake up at 1 a. m., and six again 
at 4 o 'clock. The other two are for the breakfast 
range. During July and August you need no night 
fire. Just a large flat stone propped up by two 
stakes and a two-hour dead wood fire from 8 to 
10 p. M. And I do dearly love to face the tent to 
the northeast where the rising sun can stream in 
and warm me — lazy devil — before finally turning 
out for the day. It also brings the tent doorstep 
in cool shade during the sweltering 4 o'clock sun 
of the afternoon. With this foreword as to fires 
let us pass to the making of tents. 

While it is true that an astonishing variety of 
tent forms can be made of a single rectangular 
sheet of canvas, say 8 by 16, and provided with 
suitable rings at strategic points, it is also true 
that the strains in a tent run up the lines of the 
folds from the tent pegs to the points of support. 
As canvas stretches more across the bias than up 
and down the weave, such a tent will neither take 
nor hold its true shape imless the lines of strain 
are reinforced with gores and bolt-ropes, or, in 
very light material, strong tape. Remember that 
each wall or slope of your tent must hang or draw 
from some stout fixed edge, such as a hem or a 
seam or a rope, along which the strain that holds 




DIAGRAMS OF THE FOUR TENTS 



TEPEE, SHANTY TENT, FORESTER, AND MINER S TENT 



OMAR, THE TENT MAKER 227 

the tent in shape must travel. Any attempt to 
make this stress travel through the weave of the 
canvas itself will result in an almost indistinguish- 
able edge and a weak and formless tent. If you 
will cut out a sheet of stiff notepaper twice as long 
as it is wide and experiment with it by creasing 
and setting up you will find that the following six 
well-known tents can be shaped of that one sheet 
of cloth : Lean-to (no back wall and one-third of 
canvas wasted); Miner (no wall); pyramid; 
Arabian ; cone, and canoe tent. 

Only three of these will be any good for practi- 
cal camping, as the others are either too small for 
their shape or involve considerable waste canvas. 
Of these three the Baker lean-to and the Miner 
will cover both forest and prairie. To get your 
square of canvas: Most country stores and city 
department stores carry 8-ounce and 10-ounce duck 
canvas in the standard 30-inch width at about 18 
and 22 cents a yard. The wide sizes, all in one 
piece, such as are used for motor-boat cabin decks, 
etc., can only be obtained from ship chandleries 
or the cotton goods manufacturers. In any event, 
a tent is much like a sail in the wind stress it has 
to carry, and is better seamed and gored with a 
fold in the middle of each 30-inch width. Out of 
this piece of canvas a passable lean-to can be 



228 CAMPING OUT 

folded by losing about a third of the material in 
sod cloth. More floor space can be covered by- 
using it as an Arabic rectangle tent, but the angles 
are so flat that there is little real head room in 
it for your 15 yards of cloth. Used as an A-tent 
or a wall tent it has no back or front — a trifle 
draughty — and, folded into a pyramidal form, 
again a third of it is lost in sod cloth, while the 
resulting tent is tiny. Tent shapes are just like 
gambrel roofs — you can get much more living 
room under that shape than in a straight gable 
roof for the same spread of canvas. And, as soon 
as you give it two slants from ridge pole to tent 
peg (as in the wall tent) you must have specially 
cut ends for it. 

The logical outcome of all this is that, for the 
most roomy and light forms of tents, a rectangle 
of canvas will not do. It is better to choose the 
style that suits you best, decide on the size which 
fits you and your chums, and make a real tent. I 
will describe the four forms which appear to me to 
meet best the various climatic conditions one is 
apt to meet. First, the Indian teepee. Requires 
two things, a dozen straight poles and a knowl- 
edge of how to keep two logs smouldering all 
night without raising an intolerable smudge. 
Good for permanent camps for a party of four or 



OMAR, THE TENT MAKER 22^ 

more in cold weather and in resinous forests. 
With deft handling of the fire it gives maximum 
comfort with the least effort and covers the most 
floor area with the least canvas. There is nothing 
complicated about the teepee canvas. Any semi- 
circle will fold up into a cone — the true teepee 
form. To make one covering a 10-foot circle get 
28 yards of 8-ounce duck canvas. This will weigh 
14 pounds and cost $4.48. It comes 30 inches 
wide and will sew up on the machine to make a 
sheet of canvas 21 feet long by 10 feet wide. Peg 
it out flat on the lawn, find the centre of one side, 
and strike a semicircle with 10 feet radius and 
another small semicircle of one foot radius. Cut 
out and hem all around the edge with a single 1- 
inch fold of the duck. You are now ready for the 
grommets. These are small rings used by all sail 
and tent makers. They come in two parts, the 
thimble and the ring, and are kept by all hardware 
stores in harbour towns, or by such general hard- 
ware concerns as Patterson Bros., New York. The 
% inch grommet is best for tents, as it fits neatly 
in an inch hem, and they cost 40 cents a gross box. 
To put them in you can use a sailor's fid or else 
just a large 20-d. nail. Cut a hole in the hem with 
the scissors, insert the thimble of the grommet, 
slip on the ring and turn over the thimble by work- 



230 CAMPING OUT 

ing around with the nail, turning over the edges. 
The soft brass folds back over the ring, cinching it 
down on the canvas and leaving a neat smooth 
brass hole in the canvas for your tent rope. Fin- 
ish with a light tap of the hammer. You will 
need ten grommets, spaced equi-distant around the 
bottom edge of the teepee, one in the centre edge 
of the throat circle for the raising string, and a 
row of them down each edge, placed exactly oppo- 
site for lacing the front edge. Cut out two smoke 
flaps of the waste material and sew on two pock- 
ets for the smoke poles in their upper comers. 
Hem all around and sew to the upper edges of the 
teepee from the throat down. The smoke flaps 
should have a 4-foot edge attached to the teepee, 
a 5-foot edge outstanding, a 2-foot top, and a 
12-inch bottom. Put a grommet in the lower cor- 
ner of each for the trimming ropes. To set up the 
teepee get twelve straight 3-inch poles 14 feet 
long, tie three of them together, and set up the 
tripod. Lay all the other poles but three, spaced 
equi-distant with their butts in a 10-foot circle, 
omitting the one opposite the door. Fasten the 
last pole (which should be the one opposite the 
door) to the raising grommet and lay it up. Peg 
out the teepee and lace up the front as far as the 



OMAR, THE TENT MAKER 231 

door. Set your smoke flaps down-wind as near 
as possible. 

Five men can live comfortably in a 15-pound 
teepee of this size in any kind of weather, provided 
one of them knows how to build a teepee fire. The 
niftiness of this art consists in providing enough 
live coals to eat up gradually two logs. Start 
with a small wood fire built on four short two-foot 
logs laid in a square, two across the other two 
at the ends. The logs shouldn't be over three- 
inch diameter. When you get a bed of embers 
put in the two cross logs and let her simmer. In 
about two hours everything will be out but a few 
glowing coals on the charred and half -burnt logs. 
Start more kindlings and a fresh supply of small 
stuff with two fresh logs and the charred remains 
of the other. Two hours later the fire will be all 
in again, but you have gone through the entire 
night on two fires, as either the sun or you will be 
up by the time the heat of that second fire is 
gone. 

The Miner 's tent has a number of the same ad- 
vantages as the teepee. Peary used this type in 
his Arctic work because one or two walrus oil 
fires a la blubber-and-wick sufficed to keep the tent 
within reasonable temperatures below zero. In the 
Land of the Little Sticks, where anything six feet 



232 CAMPING OUT 

high is a curiosity, and in cactus land, where eco- 
nomical fires are much in vogue, the Miner's tent 
is also desirable. You have to take along a jointed 
pole. In shape it is virtually a wall tent with two 
roofs forming a four-sided pyramid. A tent six 
feet on the side will sleep two men and weighs 
eight pounds in eight-ounce duck. To make one: 
The walls are of a single strip of duck 30 inches 
wide, 24 feet long (eight yards), hemmed at the 
bottom one inch and provided with a grommet at 
each comer and two in each lower edge spaced 
two feet. The roof is of four 6x5 feet isosceles 
triangles, which are made by sewing five 5-foot 
strips of duck together to make a sheet of canvas 
12x5 feet. Out of this you can cut three full 6x5 
triangles and two half triangles, which latter lace 
up to make the fourth. Lap and sew the four 
triangles on the machine to form your pyramid, 
double-seaming all the joints, and sew the wall 
strip around the bottom of the pyramid, leaving 
a door in one side. Hem the edges of the door 
and the half triangles of the corresponding side 
of the roof and put in grommets every four inches, 
meeting, so that they will lap snugly when laced 
up. The tent now wants a reinforcing patch at the 
peak to take the strain of the pole ; four ear tabs 
at the corners for the guy ropes, each provided 



OMAR, THE TENT MAKER 233 

with a gronunet, and four more ear tabs in the 
centre of each eave. These tabs should be about 
2x3 inches long of double-thickness duck, with a 
6x6-inch anchor, sewed to both wall and roof. 
To set up: Peg out the four guy ropes of the 
corners and raise the pole. Take up guy rope un- 
til the roof is taut and the pole sets perpendicular. 
Next the four guy ropes for the middle of each 
side and finally peg along the bottom of the walL 
In Arctic work the wall is omitted. 

The Frazer canoe tent is to all intents and pur- 
poses the Miner's tent without a wall, and pro- 
vided with a bobbinet netting window in the rear, 
with the front roof slant cut out to make a door, 
over which is sewed a flap which can be extended 
for an awning or closed as a door in bad weather. 
It is also octagonal, which covers more floor space 
per yard of canvas, but has a good deal of waste 
space, as there is no straight side anywhere long 
enough to put a bed or cot. It is a good tent for 
midsummer canoeing where the night fire is not 
needed. With pegs and pole it is said to weigh 
thirty-two pounds, which is a good deal too heavy 
for a pack trip, but by forgetting these and making 
the tent in eight-ounce duck you can cut down the 
weight to twelve pounds. The size Mr. Frazer uses 
covers an octagon 8i/^ feet in diameter. The eight 



234 CA3IPIXG OUT 

triangles of which it is made are 3S inches on the 
base by 10 feet 2 inches high, including the flap 
left over for sod cloth. To make one you there- 
fore need to sew up five strips of duck into a piec-e 
13 feet by 10 feet, and out of this get seven tri- 
angles and two half triangles which are sewn up 
as in the Miner's tent. The door is 5 feet 6 inches 
by 14 inches wide at the top and 20 inches at the 
bottom. The awning is 5 feet 8 inches, fastening 
down with heavy brass hooks and eyes. Details 
of finishing these will suggest themselves to the 
reader if interested. 

Perhaps Xessmuk did more to make the shanty- 
tent or lean-to tent known to the sportsman's 
world than any other writer. It has always been 
very popular throughout the northern timber belt, 
and for a party of four on a hunting trip is hard 
to beat. It requires a rousing fire in front — a 
mighty hygienic requirement — as the deep woods 
are always damp, rain or shine. This cold, damp 
chill comes out at night from under the leaf sod 
and fills the forest. It doesn't make any great 
change in the temperature, but it does affect the 
humidity, and it will go through an ordinary blan- 
ket like smoke through a bale of hay. Even a 
few embers and hot ashes in front of a lean-to, 
however, will keep it at bay, whereas a closed tent 




'f 



M.. 



■;/ 



—:<^ 




OMAR, THE TENT MAKER 235 

without an impossibly heavy floor-cloth will fill 
with it from the very soil it stands on. The 
camp fire in front changes all this. It warms and 
dries out the top layer of forest soil, warms your 
browse, warms the blanket and everything else 
in the tent that its rays strike. And it will con- 
tinue to do so so just as long as there is an ember 
left to send out a ray of heat. I said that the 
shanty-tent will take good care of a party of 
four — and said so advisedly. Wlien made wide 
enough for more than that its sides are of little 
use and it gets draughty. The nine-foot length 
I have also found undesirable, as it puts you too 
far from the fire. Heat intensity varies as the 
square of the distance — in other words, you will 
get only 49/81 of the heat in a nine-foot tent that 
you will in the seven-foot tent from the same fire. 
I used both the nine-foot and the seven-foot 
shanty-tent many times on hunting and camping 
trips. The slant was not enough in either length 
to really shed a heavy rain, and the roof got baggy 
in wet snowstorms. Otherwise, it was a very light, 
tight and comfortable little forest house, albeit 
a trifle irksome in the building of it. But with a 
stout pole nailed to two trees, to which the front 
edge could be laced and guys out astern, you didn't 
need any frame, so we reduced the actual time of 



236 CAMPING OUT 

erection from Nessmuk's three hours down to 
about twenty minutes. To make the seven-foot 
size you want about six feet of height at the front 
and two feet at the back. This gives you a four- 
foot angle of slope. Sew up three thirty-inch 
strips of duck, cutting always alternate slopes and 
square across so as to waste no material. You will 
need about four yards to the side. The top and 
back are in one piece ten feet long, and as two 
thirty-inch strips make you five feet wide that's 
the easiest width to adopt, and takes seven yards 
of canvas. Sew to both sides and the back edges 
on the machine, and sew on three ear tabs with 
grommets for rear guys. Put in four grommets 
along each hemmed foot and the tent is done. It 
will weigh waterproofed ten pounds. To set up : 
Either a cross rail in front with guys running to 
stout pegs out behind the tent will do, or else 
build a light frame of beech saplings. The fire 
should have back-logs or a big stone for a heat 
reflection, and should be not over eighteen inches 
from the tent mouth to the business edge of it 
nearest the tent. 

The "Forester" tent described by me in Field 
and Stream (Nov., '09, being the first offence) did 
not spring from the brain of this scribe during 
some infrequent flash of luminosity, but was de- 



OMAR, THE TENT MAKER 237 

veloped out of many woodland studies of what 
the shanty-tent did not afford in the way of mod- 
ern conveniences. I camp a good deal alone or 
either one companion along, and the S. T. was 
entirely too airy and roomy even in its smallest 
dimensions. If you made it any narrower most 
of the heat would get away. And then I seldom 
or never could find two trees growing at exactly 
the right distance apart and at the same time com- 
manding exactly the right view. And, if the wind 
changed and blew a squall of rain into the tent's 
mouth, it was somewhat difficult to move the 
trees. I liked the teepee idea — provided it didn't 
go further than three poles. And it struck me 
that half a teepee with a fire in front would be 
a step in the right direction. "With a wall at the 
back to put a definite stop somewhere to flying 
heat rays, and the walls at the side sloped to re- 
flect heat on the sleepers, progress seemed to be 
progressing finally with the invention. The pole 
down the ridge and passing out through a hole in 
the back was the sole survivor of all those teepee 
poles, since the other two were much better out- 
side, spread apart like a sailor's shears. To get 
away from the room-wasting slopes of the A-tent 
a gambrel roof was the thing, and by tying the 
front edges of the tent out to the shears that very 



238 CAMPING OUT 

shape was gotten at once, whereupon the inventor 
rested from his labours. The first of these ''for- 
ester'^ tents went out with me to a camp on Turkey 
Point in October, 1904, and we were in love from 
the start. She has been out many times since, and 
at this moment reposes in the right lower com- 
partment of the gun cabinet. To make the only 
size that really has any excuse for existence — the 
one or two-man size — get thirteen yards of eight- 
ounce duck. The foot and ridge angles are 30 and 
15 degrees. Cut out the gores for the two sides 
from your strip of duck with 7 feet 8 inches front 
edge and 2 feet back edge. (Better stake out on 
the lawn, run twine around the stakes and cut your 
canvas to fit in the outline.) Sew up sides; sew 
sides together along the ridge; sew in the two- 
foot back triangle ; hem the feet ; put in grommets,- 
four on each side and one three feet from the peak 
on each front edge, and the tent is done. It weighs 
five pounds and packs 14x10x5 inches. 

To set up: Cut three twelve-foot beech sap- 
lings. Shove one of them down along the ridge 
inside and out through the hole in the back. Stick 
it into the ground, raise the tent and rest the end 
of the ridge pole in the other two set as a shears. 
Tie all three together, tie out the front edge to 
the shears and stake down all around as taut as 



OMAR, THE TENT MAKER 239 

she will go. The tent is up, and it has taken about 
ten minutes. Lately I have added a front hood 
which can be laced together, reducing the open- 
ing of the tent mouth at the top in rainy weather 
or guyed out to the ridgepole to form a sort of 
p)orch in fine weather. It adds one pound to the 
weight of the tent and takes two yards of canvas. 
That last word brings to mind the subject of 
weight in tents. Many good woodcraftsmen ad- 
vise against any duck less than ten-ounce, and will 
even speak of twelve-ounce (which is good ma- 
terial for boards, bed bottoms and twenty-foot 
army tents). It is purely a matter of the slope. 
A wall tent with 45-degree roof must have a fly 
over it to keep out a pelting rain if of eight-ounce 
duck, or the tent will soon be full of a fine rain 
mist, which wilts everything inside. In a sharp 
A-tent this disappears and in all steep-sloped tents 
eight-ounce is plenty weight enough, and even 
American drilling, still lighter (almost four- 
ounce) will do. Good waterproofing, however, is 
necessary in all tents. The alum processes are 
good and leave the tent still a piece of cloth, albeit 
somewhat dense as regards rain. Seton and Kep- 
hart both advocate the alum-and-sugar-of-lead 
process. I have always used Nessmuk's lime-and- 
alum recipe, published by him over twenty years 



240 CAMPING OUT 

ago. The chemical basis of both processes is vir- 
tually the same — the formation of an insoluble 
double salt of calcium and alum or lead acetate 
and alum. 

This impregnates the fibres of the canvas and 
stays there. The tent gains from one to two 
pounds in weight, depending upon its size. I give 
Nessmuk's directions here: To ten quarts of wa- 
ter add 10 ounces of lime and 4 ounces of alum; 
let it stand until clear; fold tent and put it in 
another container ; pour on solution and let it soak 
for twelve hours. Then rinse in lukewarm rain- 
water, stretch and dry in the sun, and the shanty- 
tent is ready for use. 

Your tent also needs dyeing. While a passable 
khaki dye can be had in the woods by boiling two 
pounds of crushed white oak bark in a kettle of 
water, commercial "Diamond" dyes in brown or 
hunter's green are very much easier to negotiate 
with the home facilities. The advantages of dye- 
ing any old colour but white are considerable both 
in force and variety. Fewer green-head flies, 
doodle bugs and carpenter hornets spy your tent 
and make for it to hunt you up; the sun is less 
hot and glary in coloured tents, and you are less 
pestered with objectionable callers when absent 
yourself. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE ESQUIMAUX TENT 

I DO love to prowl around natural-liistory mu- 
seums! Some of my earliest childhood recollec- 
tions cluster around an enchanted afternoon when 
I was hustled through the delectable confines of 
the Philadelphia Museum by an unsympathetic 
parent. Here were all my embryo collections, 
magnified to the ^th power — and such specimens ! 
— with corkscrew neck I was dragged through 
those wonderful halls, and was only torn by force 
from final contemplation of a cave completely 
filled with amethyst crystals at the very gates of 
the institution ! The desire to prowl amid the col- 
lected wonders of nature has never left me. If I 
were to add up the hours spent in the American 
Natural History Museum in New York, the Smith- 
sonian in Washington, the Jardin des Plantes 
Museums in Paris, to say nothing of similar insti- 
tutions in London, Berlin, Boston, Brooklyn and 
Philadelphia — I'll warrant that they would make 
up a pretty lifetime for a setter dog! 

241 



242 CAMPING OUT 

The department of ethnology interests me quite 
as much as any other, more so, in fact, for here 
the ways, customs, weapons and utensils of primi- 
tive man are set forth, and much of it is directly 
applicable to our own life in the wilderness when 
on the far trail. The primitive races were all 
hunters and fishermen, practising agriculture in 
a very limited fashion, and storing up most of their 
sustenance from what grew or ran wild in the 
forest. Of all the savage races of the world, our 
own Indian was the most highly civilised, had the 
highest ideals, was the freest from idolatry, and 
lived the most logical life for his country. You 
have only to see him compared to other primitive 
peoples, as is done in the Paris and Dresden col- 
lections, to realise how very superior he was to 
the bestial and degraded peoples that inhabited 
(and do yet) the other continents of the world. 
How superior his art, his religion, his method of 
living ! — the latter surviving almost unchanged to 
this day in the North, where Nature is still kind 
to the Redman. 

From the snow lands of the Esquimaux to the 
arid llanos of the Painted Desert everything that 
the Indians did had a good reason back of it. If, 
in viewing a specimen of their dwellings, weapons 
or household utensils, you cannot make out just 



THE ESQUIMAUX TENT 243 

why it is formed thus and so, it is up to the be- 
holder to trace out the underlying causes. Every 
least detail has a practical cause back of it, and 
if you omit the detail you will find the results 
not up to expectations. These things have been 
tried out by centuries of use on our own continent, 
and for a white man to try to improve on them is 
simply to go over ground that has been tried out 
and found wanting long before by the Indians 
themselves. Some of the reasons seem pretty ob- 
scure ; one has to actually make the articles them- 
selves to find out why they were made in such- 
and-such fashion and not in some other way that 
occurs to the beholder as a possible improvement. 
Wherefore, when, while viewing a detail group 
of the summer home of the Esquimaux, I was con- 
fronted with a combination tent and teepee made^ 
out of seal-skins, my first question was ''Why the 
combination; why not either teepee or A-tent as 
much more economical of canvas per square foot 
of ground covered?" Down in the Hudson's Bay 
country we often see the same combination in 
canvas, a wall tent sewed into a teepee, a sort 
of adaptation of something that the white man has 
devised, but the summer camp of the Esquimau 
was devised by himself alone and has been in use 
for centuries. The reasons back of it appear to be 



244 CAMPING OUT 

as follows : even in the Arctic sununer tlie wind is 
forever blowing strongly, the nights are cold, snow 
still exists in the shady hollows, and the dampness 
of it is in the wind after sunset. Therefore the 
teepee alone would be not only impossible because 
of lack of poles, but because it would be too large 
and draughty; too much headroom for comfort. 
The A-tent alone would provide suitable sleeping 
quarters, but that would be about all ; no home, no 
place to work out of the wind and rain, no room 
to carry on domestic affairs, to store up provi- 
sions, implements of transportation, weapons, har- 
ness and the like. This the teepee alone would 
provide, but — ^here's the big idea — if the latter is 
made small and an A-tent sewed into one side of 
it, you would get all these desirable qualities in 
one tent — good sleeping quarters in the A-tent and 
a fire space, kitchen and ' ' living room, ' ' out of the 
wind and weather, in the teepee end. 

This, then, was the raison d'etre of the Esquimau 
summer tent, and it at once occurred to me that 
it would make the finest model imaginable for a 
winter tent for the sportsman. Eeaders of ' ' Camp 
Craft" will recall my published description of the 
Blizzard Tent, a first attempt towards producing 
an ideal winter tent. It was in effect a modifica- 
tion of the well-known Hudson's Bay tent, with 



THE ESQUIMAUX TENT 245 

triangular ends, instead of semi-circular ones, to 
save pegs. This tent weighed three pounds, and 
was six feet long by five feet wide in its main 
body, and the ends were 18 inches deep, giving a 
total length of nine feet. It was made of processed 
light green tent muslin, which any of the outfitters 
will sell you for forty cents a yard, very light but 
not very strong. But with such a small area of 
tent surface we found that no wind that blew could 
come anywhere near ripping it. The tent was 
most easily pitched by tying a tent rope around a 
convenient tree, leading the ridge rope out through 
the tent and over a low pair of shears and pegging 
down to ground. Very quickly and easily put up, 
and, as the tent stood only four feet six inches 
high, the shears for it were to be cut in any bush. 
As a late fall and early spring tent for two, when 
the nights were bitter cold and there was some 
snow on the ground, it proved a fine thing ; in the 
rear triangle was plenty of room to store duffle 
and drive a stake to tie the carbide light to; the 
sleeping-bags went side by side in the main por- 
tion of the A-tent, and in the front triangle, by 
guying out the front flaps and rigging a wind- 
break, you got a space to set up the tent stove in 
and do cooking operations. It was a trifle crowded 
for the latter, and the tent was apt to fill with 



246 CAMPING OUT 

smoke and stay filled. Put the fire off a short dis- 
tance and everything would be lovely, but in mid- 
winter, when the snow is flying, that is just what 
you do not want — you want the whole works in- 
side, out of the wind, where cookee can sit in com- 
fort and manipulate his pots and pans without the 
wind filling his eyes with acrid smoke and the 
snowflakes or raindrops swirling in and wetting 
things down. It made a fine little camp for two, 
with the fire in the front part of the tent, but I 
was not satisfied with it for winter work. For 
midsummer camping it was mosquitoproof with 
a small net spread across the front flap opening, 
but at first it was ''breathy," that is, your lungs 
would fill all the rear part of the tent with "old" 
air and your sleep would not be as refreshing as 
in an open tent, like the forester or lean-to. So 
I added a vent cover at the rear peak which went 
out along the tent rope and was tied fast with 
tape and grommet, and an opening was cut in the 
peak about a foot triangular in area and a piece 
of stout hospital gauze was sewed in there, the 
flap cut out being left loose and provided with tape 
and grommet, so that in very cold weather even 
this peak could be closed up. With this ventilator 
the breathiness disappeared, all the foul air going 
out through the peak. 



THE ESQUIMAUX TENT 247 

Figuring on the weight of this same tent textile, 
I calculated that a teepee six feet on a side, four- 
square and six feet high would weigh two and one- 
half pounds. The side into which the blizzard tent 
fitted would have enough canvas omitted to leave a 
triangular opening five feet along the bottom and 
four feet six inches high, and, where the walls of 
the teepee straddled the walls of the tent, there 
would be a tape sewed outside of the latter with 
tie-tapes at six-inch intervals, for, of course, with- 
out these ties the wind would buckle the side of 
the tent enough to make a big crack between it 
and the straight edge of the teepee. My original 
idea was to set up the teepee, with four poles 
going up the four edges of the teepee, tie a hori- 
zontal brace across the rear pair of poles about 
the height of the ridge rope of the tent and anchor 
this rope to the brace, leading out and over a pair 
of shears and thence to ground. When the teepee 
was sewed up it came out two and one-fourth 
pounds weight, and I proceeded to set it up with 
four poles. I soon saw that it was worse than a 
camera tripod to get all those poles right and have 
them stay braced when the strain of the tent rope 
came on the rear brace. The Esquimaux avoided 
it by substituting a pole, or two of them, for the 
ridge rope and carrying the end of this pole in a 



248 CAMPING OUT 

pair of shears. However, for campers' use this 
would get into the dilemma of too many poles, and 
so I sidestepped them all by using just one pole, 
a single stout upright eight feet long coming up 
through the centre of the teepee. To set up you 
first drove the four teepee pegs in a true six-foot 
square and tied the four comers of the teepee to 
them. Next you cut four small sticks, two feet 
long, and tied them into a 16-inch square by the 
ties at the open square peak of the teepee. To 
these a double bridle was attached and then the 
eight-foot centre pole was cut and slipped in 
through the hole in the top of the teepee. Next 
it was stood upright and the tie string at its top 
slipped under the double bridle. Hauling taut on 
this, up came the teepee all square, flat and true, 
and you could draw it as tight as you pleased — 
some tight in a heavy wind ! — and make fast. 

The time to do this, plus driving the central side 
stakes of the teepee bottom, took in all about half 
an hour — twenty minutes on a sand beach where 
stakes were plentiful and cheap. Then the tent 
rope was attached to the teepee pole and the tail 
of it led down and belayed fast on the rear cen- 
tral teepee peg. The tent was then slipped over 
this ridge rope and the latter led out over a pair 
of shears and belayed to a peg in the ground. 



THE ESQUIMAUX TENT 249 

The tent was then pegged out taut and the job 
was done ; time, not over three-quarters of an hour 
for the whole operation. Entrance to both tent 
and teepee was via the flap of one side, which was 
left open on the leeward side, and the tie-tapes of 
teepee edge and tent wall made fast on the wind- 
ward side. The two teepee flaps on the windward 
side at the peak were then tied up to the pole top, 
and the tent was ready for occupancy. 

I first set it up this way in the woods of Inter- 
laken, for I was wildly curious to know how a 
tent stove would operate in the teepee. My own 
tent stove has been described before in this vol- 
ume. It weighs two and one-fourth pounds and 
is a mere shell of 28-gauge iron, bent around the 
two cooking pots of the forester cook-kit, side by 
side, and is provided with a top with two stove 
holes cut in it for the two pots, a detachable stove- 
pipe which goes at one end and a draught-door 
at the other. As this pipe is included in the weight 
of the stove, it is shorter than the usual pipe, be- 
ing only three feet high when extended. How 
would it work in the teepee? I knew that an open 
fire would get along all right, though much afraid 
of sparks on that processed cloth; but with the 
stovepipe raising the heat outlet up into the peak 
of the teepee, would it set it afire or get it too 



250 CAMPING OUT 

warm or discharge sparks on it, or what? The 
answer came as an agreeable surprise. I set up 
the stove with the pipe running up alongside the 
central pole and a bucket of water handy for emer- 
gencies, put on a pot and a pot-cover over the 
holes and set a fire opposite the draught-door. 
Smoke, as usual, poured out of the chimney in a 
heavy column, as always when starting up a tent 
stove, but the teepee itself acted like a splendid 
chimney, catching the smoke up in the peak and 
whirling it outside on somewhat the principle of 
an ejector. The only thing you had to guard 
against was getting too much kindling in the stove, 
so that more smoke was made than the chimney 
could handle ; in which case, like all tent stoves, a 
lot of smoke would work out around the lids and 
the pots, filling the tent with smoke. But every 
one who has handled a tent stove knows enough 
not to crowd the thing at first and to go light with 
fuel until he has a bed of coals established. It is 
the only way to avoid smoke. 

You will be astonished at the amount of cooking 
that one of these stoves will do on a minimum 
of fuel. Compare it with the armful of good black- 
jack oak that you used in the open grid fire in 
cooking the same meal, and then note how a very 
few chips suffice to keep pots boiling and the fry- 




THE ESQUIMAU TENT WITH TENT STOVE IN TEPEE END 




SIDE VIEW OF THE ESQUIMAU TENT 



THE ESQUIMAUX TENT 251 

ing-xjan sizzling with the tent stove. As I look 
back over my writings on camping I feel that I 
have said not half enough on this subject; have 
not half appreciated my own stove, in fact, to say 
nothing of the many other good ones made by the 
various outfitting firms. 

Well, it was not long before the pot was bub- 
bling, and I got on a fry-pan filled with water, as 
I v/as doing no cooking for this first trial in the 
teepee. This also soon began to bubble and boil 
over, and I looked inside the stove to see how 
things were getting on. A small bed of glowing 
coals under those pots and pans and a few brown 
chips were doing all this work. I put my hand 
over the top of the pipe; no great heat there; 
too warm, of course, to hold it there an instant. I 
felt of the walls of the teepee up in the peak ; they 
were just comfortably hand warm — nothing to 
worry about there. Then I poked the fire to get 
some sparks. Quite a few shot out of the pipe and 
vanished up the teepee peak in the draught; they 
were all of the perishing kind. I decided to add 
a regular spark-arrester so as to catch the kind 
that do business, as it would add but little to the 
weight of the stove and would make sure on live- 
coal sparks. 

There w^as plenty of room in the teepee tent. 



252 CAMPING OUT 

It will sleep six at a pinch; it did sleep five the 
first time it was used. It seemed to me pretty- 
near ideal for winter camping in snowy and bliz- 
zardy weather, a tent that weighs six pounds to 
sleep five men, provide a comfortable cooking and 
eating space inside, a warm stove all night, and 
yet leave me half of the tent for use in fall and 
spring as a canoe cruising and hiking tent. 

As sand is very like petrified snow in the way it 
drifts and acts, it seemed to me that we had here 
just the combination for comfortable sand camp- 
ing. It has long been a problem to find just the 
tent for the Barnegat beaches. All the open tents 
were impossible, because they oifered so much 
space to be protected from mosquitoes ; the closed 
tents were still worse, because they were hot as 
Tophet in the daytime and they filled up full of 
stinging beach-flies if you opened them, and at 
night the mosquitoes were sure to find a crack 
from which your breath was escaping and follow 
it in, to your undoing. Any open lean-to had the 
disadvantage that it protected you not at all from 
blowing and drifting sand, and out of many camps 
at Barnegat I have had few really comfortable 
ones, while my companions usually dig out for the 
shelter of the Life-Saving Station after the first 
tilt with the mosquitoes. 



THE ESQUIMAUX TENT 253 

The teepee tent looked as if it had possibilities, 
and so we took it down for the first Barnegat 
camp in July. Arrived on the beach after a six- 
mile row down the bay, we found a gale of wind 
in progress, as usual ; the sand drifting and blow- 
ing all over everything and the wind hurling every- 
thing bodily into the ocean not actually nailed fast. 
The teepee tent went up in record time, principally 
because most of it was pegged fast before any of 
it was raised up to the fury of the wind. When 
the pole was finally raised we put one over on Old 
Man Wind, for before he knew it a taut straight 
pyramid of light green tenting was facing him on 
the open beach. At that we had to put such a 
strain on the bridles that I feared the wind would 
rip the light muslin to ribbons, but it did not, even 
though it blew much worse the next day. 

Getting the A-tent up was not so easy. The 
minute it was led out on its ridge rope it flapped 
wildly and took the united efforts of two men and 
a boy to get its windward slope pegged fast. 
However, it was done in time, and the three kids 
were sent to the bay for dry seagrass for 1>edding 
while I foraged for a piece of tin for a stove- 
bottom, as sand makes poor stuff to set a stove 
on. I broke off and straightened out a piece of 
refrigerator door for the purpose while partner 



254 CAMPING OUT 

was getting ready the fishing-tackle, set up the 
stove and laid a floor of driftwood boards all 
around the leeward side of the teepee tent to keep 
down the sand tracked into the tent. Then I made 
a cupboard out of drift boxes, set out the cook-kit 
and provisions and, when the kids arrived with the 
floor tarp filled with dry seagrass, I laid it out over 
the floor of the tent and along one side and foot of 
the teepee. Then down went the three sleeping- 
bags for the kids in the tent, while partner and I 
had ours in the teepee, and then we all went fishing 
in the surf. In an hour it was time for me to get 
after grub. Our fishing-hole was full of flound- 
ers and the kids were yanking them out as fast as 
they could strike and reel, while the Littlest Boy 
amused himself by climbing to the top of the 
tallest dune and shooting down a sand slide on its 
face to the beach, twenty-five feet below. Great 
sport for a five-year-old! 

Cooking in the teepee in that gale was not all 
beer and skittles. The little old stove rambled 
right along with the boiling and stewing, but every 
now and then a gust would drive clear over the 
flaps, curl the column of smoke back on itself and 
puff it back into the teapee. A taller smoke pipe 
would have avoided this; it would not matter in 
winter camping, for you would naturally pitch the 



THE ESQUIMAUX TENT 255 

outfit in the shelter of a clump of spruces or a 
ravine so as to get out of the cold wind, and noth- 
ing but a squally gale would annoy you by driv- 
ing the smoke back down through the teepee. I 
moved the kitchen out in the lee of the teepee 
and there had much more comfort. All you had 
to do was to prepare the mulligan in one pot, the 
rice in the other, heave in a few chips on the bed 
of live coals, and go fishing. Half an hour later I 
would come back to give her a look and everything 
would be bubbling nicely and a few more chips 
would be needed. Compare this with an open fire 
under a wire grate in a gale of wind — how long 
would the fuel last, how long would you dare leave 
it, and what sort of cooking would you get? I 
once left just such an open fire, only long enough 
to splice a broken tip for the Kid — to find on my 
return my precious cake scorched to a cinder, the 
coffee boiled down to lye and the fire burnt out. 
Not so with the stove! 

That night we tied up the flaps and, after fish- 
ing until twelve o'clock, turned in, only to find 
the tent full of mosquitoes and the kids restlessly 
turning in their sleep. How did they get in? For 
the flap had been carefully closed and the mos- 
quito-blind was tight. P-s-s-t ! — the teepee top, of 
course ! Those devils had managed to light on that 



256 CAMPING OUT 

top in a gale of wind and follow down tlie outgoing 
draught of air, with its human scent, until they 
found the nice, fat pickings inside. We organised 
a war by carbide lamp, drove every last one of 
them out and swathed the teepee top in mosquito 
gauze. Then sleep for all ! We camped there four 
days and had no trouble with mosquitoes, though 
some friends of ours, camping in a closed canoe 
tent, were routed and retired to the Life-Saving 
Station, and we voted the teepee tent a good one 
for sand camping, though I have since gotten up 
and tried out better ones, described in the earlier 
chapters of this book. 

The next trip of the teepee tent was up to the 
Y. M. C. A. encampment in the Catskills, where 
the Honour Lodge begged for the privilege of 
sleeping in it (how enthusiastic boys are about 
anything that has to do with the great outdoors!) 
and six of them were accorded permission to do 
so. Anywhere you can find a level spot 6x12 feet 
in area will answer to set this tent upon if well 
drained, but when I set it up I removed no rocks 
nor put down any browse, for I slept that night 
in the original Old Warrior forester tent. How- 
ever, those boys turned in on the rocks and went 
off to sleep like stones — I wish I had that hardi- 
hood! 



THE ESQUIMAUX TENT 257 

All through the fall the ''Perfect" shelter tent 
was used, but when the snows began to fly the first 
camp in the teepee tent was undertaken. Two of 
us went on a snowshoe hike in the mountains to 
see what we could see — mostly tracks. I carried 
my caribou-skin packsack, sleeping-bag, the tee- 
pee half of the outfit, the tent stove and cook-kit, 
a 1-pound 6x6-foot floor tarp, night socks, mocs, 
skull-cap, carbide lamp, five pounds of provisions 
(much of it in the cook-kit), axe and ditty-bag. 
Partner had the tent half of the teepee tent, ten 
pounds of provisions, his sleeping-bag and per- 
sonal duffle. Both packs weighed about the same — 
27 pounds — and we had our snowshoes slung on 
our backs when we started out. No firearms other 
than our revolvers were taken, the latter for prac- 
tice and a chance at small game principally. When 
we arrived at the jumping-ofiP spot there was over 
a foot of snow in the mountains and so we put on 
the shoes, just for practice, and hit the trail up an 
old lumber road. I got ci crack at a rabbit scurry- 
ing off through a snowy thicket, but could not draw 
quick enough, and partner dropped a hawk which 
he wanted for a trophy. We did about eight miles, 
with the keen northwest wind whistling through 
the forest and the warm sun feeling good at every 
south bend where the wind was shunted off above 



258 CAMPING OUT 

us. In midaftemoon we picked out a nice camp 
site, a ledge on the mountain facing south, with 
the brook down, maybe, a hundred feet below in 
the ravine, and set up the teepee tent. All its 
north wall was tied fast against the wind and snow 
was banked up a foot along the bottom. The tent 
end was floored with browse picked from some 
limbs lopped off a bushy white pine growing near 
our site, the snow having been first shovelled off 
the whole site with our shoes. Next I rustled two 
flat rocks for a stove bottom and set up the little 
major in his accustomed place, with the pipe run- 
ning up alongside the pole about four inches away 
from it. Two snowshoes were cleaned of packed 
snow and set up for a shelf in one end of the tee- 
pec, and on them were set out the kit and provision 
bags, while partner hiked down to the brook for a 
canvas bucket of water. I got a tiny fire going 
in front of the draught-doo- of the stovc, with the 
front lid off so that the flames could rise right up. 
A pot was set in the rear hole, half fill-^d with 
water, and, while my front fire was establishing 
coals, I pared potatoes and onions for the mulli- 
gan, chopped in some cubes of steak, added a hand- 
ful of rice and a dab or two of macaroni and then 
pushed back the first coals under the pot, adding 
more fuel to the fire in front. So started it will 



THE ESQUIMAUX TENT 259 

not fill the teepee with smoke, for the chimney will 
carry off all that is made. A second pot was pre- 
pared with water, sugar and mixed prunes, apri- 
cots and peaches, a few short, chunky sticks of 
hardwood were put in the stove and then both of 
us, feeling the warming-up effect of the stove in 
the tent, threw off our mackinaws and attended 
to one of the finest jobs of the day — taking off our 
freezing wet hunting-boots and changing to warm, 
dry socks in the grateful warmth of the stove. 
The wet ones were strung on the rear guyrope 
of the A-tent, which goes down from the teepee 
pole to the rear centre side peg, and we put on low 
mocs forthwith. 

The day's work outside was done. My camp 
mocs for snow weather are ^'moose-hide"; that is, 
not buckskin which gets wet if you walk out in the 
snow, but heavy oiled leather. Then the harsh 
red sunset in the west warned us that it was time 
to fill the carbides, lash one to the teepee pole and 
mount the other on a stake driven in in the rear 
triangle of the tent. Partner busied himself with 
this and then with pegging down the floor tarp 
and rolling out his sleeping-bag, while I mixed my 
cornbread batter and poured enough for two into 
an aluminum baking-pan which I always carry for 
small parties. Eaking out some coals through the 



260 CAMPING OUT 

draught-door I put them on top of the pan-cover 
with the cooking-gloves, took off the forward pot, 
raked back some more coals and covered them with 
fresh sticks. On the rear hole of the stove went 
the pan, with its cargo of hot coals on top and the 
front hole covered with a fry-pan doing duty as 
a stove-lid. Into this pan went a nice steak for 
two and, with it covered with a tin plate, I cleaned 
out the batter-mixing pan and poured the fruit 
stew off into it. Two cups of water next went into 
the former stewpot, and it was high time to go 
digging for my cake pan, for one must watch it 
to see that it doesn't burn. A peek inside showed 
the cake fully risen, so the pan was capsized and 
put on top of the stove, where it could get plenty 
of baking heat, but would not likely burn. Some 
undivided attention to the precious cake for five 
minutes more ended with a perfect golden speci- 
men, ready to be set leaning against the stove to 
keep warm — still in its pan. 

Back went the steak for a finishing; a sniff of 
the mulligan, and m a few minutes more the steak 
was set aside, while a pot went on in its place to 
boil up for tea. Last ceremony : Already the mul- 
ligan is being poured out into two waiting tins, 
the steak is finishing on the rear hole; butter, 
cow-can and sugar-bag are produced, and the cake 



THE ESQUIMAUX TENT 261 

is tipped out of its pan smoking hot and divided 
between partner and me. Good with butter and 
mulligan. Now the tea is set off and steeped; a 
potful of water for washing up goes on in its place, 
and we divide the steak, more cornbread, and two 
big cups of bully old tea are poured, ''cowed" and 
sugared to taste. Then the stewed fruit ; the pipes 
are lit; the stove fed some more hardwood, and 
we wash up and put away the kitchen in the rear 
of the teepee. 

It was snowing again outside, and dark, pitch 
dark, by this time, and the wind was howling over 
the mountain, but we were warm, light and com- 
fortable inside the teepee tent. 

Keep trash wood out of the stove; it does not 
pay, and you are forever feeding it. Oak, maple, 
blackjack, birch, pignut hickory, these are not only 
very much hotter but last infinitely longer. I spent 
some time lacing up my sleeping-bag and then 
went cut and prepared night billets for the stove. 
Two split logs of oak, four inches thick by a foot 
long, are the medicine. 

During the evening of story-telling and smoking 
we fed her fresh small sticks of one and two inches 
diameter at intervals until we had a deep bed of 
coals, with the draught-door almost closed. Then, 
after the carbides began to dim and give hints that 



262 CAMPING OUT 

bedtime was at hand, I put on these two billets, 
put on the lid-covers and turned in. I do not 
know when they burnt out, maybe three hours 
later. The process is a charcoalising one; slow 
combustion with no flame and no smoke ; you will 
see it in your own hearth fire happening to the 
last log left in the ashes over a bed of coals. 

Next morning bacon, eggs, coffee, cereal and cold 
fruit from last night, and then a fine day of track- 
ing and exploring in the snow. The teepee tent 
had made good as a winter camp outfit. Any one 
can make one ; no one has any patent on it, for the 
Esquimaux invented it long before they saw the 
first white man. 



CHAPTER XIII 

MAINLY ABOUT TENT STOVES 

* 'Some stove !'^ 

These words were exclaimed with admiration 
for about the hundredth time that trip, as we sat 
perched on the bough bunk at the back of our 
warm, cheerful tent, while a raw nor 'easter howled 
through the forest outside and our little stove 
sizzled with occasional raindrops and gave out 
heat like a furnace. Atop of it a mulligan pot 
shot out steam under its cover, while a fry-pan, 
with a couple of dissected partridges inside and a 
deep dish inverted over it, sauteed our supper 
meat. A collection of wet socks hung from the 
tent flap over the stove, while our hunting boots 
turned up their soles judgmatically for the even- 
ing's drying. 

' ' Some stove ! ' ' My thoughts contrasted it with 
an erstwhile campfire, and the tent so full of smoke 
that wet, scalding eyes would be the rule instead of 
the exception; contrasted its tiny firewood pile of 
dead oak billets with the heap of timber that would 



264 CAMPING OUT 

be needed to keep a campfire going ; contrasted its 
secure pots and pans with ones on a campfire that 
would need careful watching. And then my mem- 
ories idled back a couple of years to a big-game 
hunt in Montana, and again there was the tent, 
and the wet socks a-drying and the soaking hunt- 
ing boots disposed around another and larger 
stove, with an oven in it in which a batch of corn- 
bread was rising, while mulligan, tea and fried elk 
steaks were sizzling atop. A blizzard was roar- 
ing down the mountains, and two feet of snow al- 
ready weighted down the spruces, but inside the 
tent all was warmth and cheer, while four men 
looked admiringly at the little red-hot demon that 
was making all the comfort. It was up to some one 
to pass an appropriate remark. ''Some stove!" 
had not then been invented, but Big Johns was 
equal to the occasion. ''Waal," he drawled, "a 
feller could shore git almighty doggone hot a-set- 
tin' on that there stove!" 

Yes, sir, I'm a convert; have been for these last 
four years. I love a pretty, cheerful campfire, and 
never fail to kindle one for its light and warmth; 
and in summer fishing camps I use one or another 
form of cook range campfire. But on a hunting 
trip in the mountains, where you get ice in the 
pails every night and have plenty of snow, rain and 



MAINLY ABOUT TENT STOVES 265 

cold weather, the really practical dope is a tent 
stove. You can have them of any weight from 
2% pounds up, collapsible and non-collapsible; 
the latter, as they go over your cook kit and can 
be used to pack things in, taking really no more 
actual room than the collapsible ones. 

This preachment was written after a week in the 
hills of north Jersey, where we scared up over 
ten partridge a day, and could have killed the limit 
every day, and our tent stove figured as the hero 
of the trip. Like most populous states, New 
Jersey has had to enact very stringent fire laws. 
So much damage has been done to the forests from 
roving hunters building indiscriminate and often 
carelessly left campfires, that the State has been 
forced to protect itself against the forest fires 
that result. Some time ago my boy and I stood 
looking across the wide Morristown plains, at the 
tumbled heaps of forested mountains that fill the 
northwest comer of our State. Of every shape 
and size, shrouded in cloud and mist, the big fel- 
lows stretched far and wide, like huge, green sea 
billows. 

''Oh, Boy!" chirped my youngster to his dad. 
''wouldn't a week in those hills after partridges, 
come November, be great!" 

It certainly would! We planned to strike in 



266 CAMPING OUT 

there with our packs on our backs, about the 9th 
of the month, camp in some wild ravine in good 
partridge country for a week, and hunt those hills 
far and wide. The question of a permit to build 
campfires at once came up, for the fire wardens 
arrest any one with a campfire and no permit to 
build it. I wrote my friend, Mr. Wilber, Chief 
Firewarden, at Trenton, for a roving permit, but 
found that this cannot be granted ; you must look 
up the firewarden in the township where you are 
going to hunt, and, if in his judgment it would be 
safe for you to build campfires in the mountains 
under his jurisdiction, he issues you one. If a 
forest fire results from any act of yours, you must 
pay the entire damages therefor, and maybe a 
fine besides. After the prolonged dry season that 
we had that year, the November woods were a 
foot deep with bone-dry leaves, and I doubt 
whether any warden in those mountains would 
issue a permit to any one to build a campfire, so 
dangerous were the conditions. And, suppose the 
township you picked out proved gameless, and you 
wanted to move further on until you struck wild 
country that had plenty of game? — how about a 
new permit, with maybe twelve miles to hike to 
hunt up the warden! — Nix! 
Wilber suggested that the best way to obviate 



MAINLY ABOUT TENT STOVES 267 

the whole permit question was to take along a 
collapsible stove, as confined fire does not come 
under the same category as the open campfire, and 
no permit is needed anywhere for a tent stove. 
We decided to follow his advice. We took the two- 
hole Forester tent stove, designed by me some time 
ago. It just fits over the two pots of the Forester 
cook kit (all the regular makes of cook kits have a 
sheet-iron stove that fits over the largest pot). 
This stove weighs 2% pounds, including its two- 
joint pipe. With its pots in place and the lids 
underneath, the pots being filled with small food 
bags and condiments, the whole was wrapped in 
a dark green oil cloth tarp, which goes under my 
sleeping bag at night, and then it rode on top of 
my pack, held there by the straps for the purpose. 
The Kid and I were the whole party, for all my 
friends were either away on other trips or had 
some other kind than an exploration trip planned* 
We figured on sixty-five pounds as a total load for 
the two of us, twenty-five for him and forty for 
me. Such a load you can pack in over the moun- 
tains anywhere, without special fatigue, and we 
selected a spot on the map six miles in from the 
nearest railroad station, in a deep ravine, between 
two mountains, with a brook flowing down it. Such 
spots are sure to be forested, as the country is too 



268 CAMPING OUT 

rough for farms, and so this proved to be when we 
got there. 

Our loads were : grub, 25 lbs. ; 2 packsack sleep- 
ing bags, 14 lbs. ; stove and cook kit, 7 lbs. ; tent 
Sy2 lbs.; pillows, night socks, night toques, lan- 
tern and candles, rope and odds and ends, 4 lbs. ; 
tarps and ammunition, 5 lbs.; axes and knives, 
6^ lbs.; total, 65 lbs. Our grub list for a week 
in the mountains included : 2 cans beans, 2^/^ lbs. ; 2 
cans evaporated cream, %-lb.; 3 lbs. flour, 1 lb. 
pancake flour, %-lb. corn meal, 1 lb. ''Wonderful" 
bacon, 1 lb. prunes, i/o lb. butter, 1 doz. eggs, 2 
lbs. ; 1 doz. potatoes and 1 doz. onions, 4 lbs. ; 1 lb. 
rice, ^-Ib. coffee, i/^-lb. macaroni, l^-lb. salt, l^-lb, 
baking powder ; %-lb. tea ; pepper and Steero beef 
capsules, 14 -lb. ; 2 lbs. sugar, 1% lbs. steak, i^-lb. 
sliced ham, 1 lb. apples. Total, 25 lbs. This list 
presupposed two partridges and a rabbit a day, as 
the minimum bag for the guns, or, if the birds 
are scarce, make it two rabbits and a partridge. 
It may be reduced somewhat for two men, but a 
growing boy just in his teens requires two men 
and a shovel to keep him fed, and he will eat 
you out of house and home if you let him. 

"We had plenty throughout the trip. The steak 
did for the first night, and apples and ham with 
some graham crackers picked up in the railroad 



MAINLY ABOUT TENT STOVES 269 

station for the first lunch when packing into the 
mountains. After that we had a big feed for 
breakfast, usually coffee, combread, apples, game 
meat, and corn mush or rice, bacon and eggs ; got 
off at eight o'clock and hunted until about four, 
with a bite of combread and bacon at noon, and 
then another big feed about six o'clock, allowing 
an hour to get it cooked. Our mulligans were 
made of game, onions, potatoes, macaroni, and 
rice ; and the breadstuff usually biscuits or squaw 
bread, and our meat was partridge sauteed in the 
fry-pan. The bag limit is three, but you are lucky 
to get two partridges a day, as they are wild and 
foxy, and you will get about six good shots in a 
day's hunt, and are doing well to make good on 
two of them without a dog. 

We packed over about two miles of farm roads, 
and then got into the mountains, where, after 
climbing two forested ridges, we arrived on one 
that looked over a sea of brown hills, with a great 
valley far below us and a brook in it. A grouse 
jumped, just behind our lookout rock, and a rab- 
bit hopped from some mountain briers at our very 
next step. We had found our country at last! 
And we pitched down into that valley until we were 
on the mossy rocks at its bottom, and the frowning 
walls of the next ridge rose abruptly just in from 



270 CAMPING OUT 

us. Another grouse jumped from the ravine side 
as we packed down, so we named the campsite, 
*'Camp Pat," in his honour. Owing to the pro- 
longed dry season, the leaves were like blown 
tinder, and no water was in evidence in the brook, 
but down in the crevices between the mossy boul- 
ders we found wells of it, on which a chip drifted 
downstream, showing that it was flowing. The 
first thing to do was to clear away the leaves 
around the fire site, and this the Kid got at with a 
witchhazel branch, while I searched the ravine for 
a couple of big, flat stones for a base for the stove. 
These hauled into camp and levelled, the stove was 
unpacked and set up. The pipes for it went side 
by side on the Kid's pack, wrapped in his tarp, 
and a slice of steak tightly rolled in paper filled 
each pipe — a good way to carry raw meat. Most 
stove pipes are made telescopic, but they will not 
remain so after the first few camps, as they get 
out of round and caked with soot and rust inside, 
so many outfitters supply them just to joint to- 
gether with a draw at the end of each section in- 
stead of trying to telescope them. 

It didn't take long after this to set up the Bliz- 
zard tent on its ridge rope, run from a convenient 
sapling over a pair of shears and across to another 
sapling not necessarily in line with the first as the 



MAINLY ABOUT TENT STOVES 271 

shears take care of that. Then it was pegged 
out, with the front flaps on each side of the stove, 
and the tent was filled with dry leaves to the roof. 
Packing these down we spread out the tarps, 
hove in the packsack sleeping bags, and estab- 
lished the grub pile. Soon a fire was going in the 
stove, a mulligan of onions, potatoes, macaroni, 
rice and beef capsules went in the front pot, and 
tea in its pail on the rear hole, which is always the 
hottest. The mull, takes 35 minutes — as long as 
fried steak and tea combined. When the tea water 
comes to a boil, set off and start the steak. Fif- 
teen minutes later it is done, set back the tea pail, 
when it will boil again in a minute or so, and then 
add your leaves. Four minutes later they aro 
steeped, the mulligan is taken off and its soup 
served, while the residue goes back on the stove 
again. When the soup is eaten, serve the steak 
and stew on plates, with tea on the side. Stew 
some prunes, or serve ''as is," the latter being 
quite as acceptable with high-class prunes, the 20c- 
a-pound kind. 

A well-managed tent stove is a delight; a poor 
one, a fume factory and a misery. Do not cuss 
the stove out; study it and see why it smokes. 
They all draw fine if you do not attempt impossi- 
bilities. For example, to make your chimney draw 



272 CAMPING OUT 

requires a column of hot air in it, nothing else. 
The length of the pipe doesn't matter much. The 
Forester stove pipe is only 28 inches high, while 
most of them are in three lengths averaging six 
to nine feet, but they all draw equally well, or 
poorly, depending upon whether they are hot or 
cold. When you first start the fire the smoke 
doesn't know where to go and so bursts out around 
the lids or pots, filling the tent with smoke. Cause, 
no heat in the stove-pipe. Remedy, take off the 
lids and let the flames rise for awhile until you 
have some coals in the stove and some body to your 
fire. As soon as you put on the lids again the 
flames at once hunt every opening, and so find the 
chimney hole right off. A few moments later the 
chimney is hot and a column of hot air established 
that will draw like a major. 

Again, do not let your fire burn down to a few 
live coals and then pile on a lot of wood, for she 
will smoke you out in five minutes. Cause, not 
enough heat and too much smoke for the chimney 
to take care of. Remedy, open a lid, take out most 
of the billets and build up your fire with small 
wood that will kindle and make a hot flame, when 
you can add larger billets at discretion. 

After the evening meal is over and the hot 
water pot on, you light your pipes and begin to 



MAINLY ABOUT TENT STOVES 273 

think of bedding and comfort. Add, as fast as 
possible, billet after billet to the stove so as to 
build up a big pile of live coals. As soon as the 
flame is out of them and you can see that the 
stove is full of charred wood with a little reddish 
flame curling off it, close down all the draughts 
and let her glow. Do not attempt to pile a lot of 
wood on a meagre bed of live coals or she will 
smoke you out and kill her own fire. And, often 
you will find that with a few billets inside she 
will lose her flame and begin to smoke. Do not 
permit this ; take off a lid and blow the wood to 
flame again, when she will go on nicely, making 
flame instead of near-flame, which is the acridest 
of smoke. If she smokes, study the stove; it is 
you, not the stove, that is at fault. They are a 
joy — judgmatically handled. 

In the morning we had four cooked dishes to 
handle on a two-hole stove, and to bring them out 
all cooked at the same time required judgment on 
the part of the cook. You want coffee, bread, 
cereal, and fried meat. Get on the coffee pail and 
cereal pot first, while you mix your batter for 
cakes or cornbread, or your dough for biscuit. 
My baker is a little aluminum stew pan, II/4 inches 
deep by 7 inches wide by 9 inches long, outside 
measurements. It has an aluminum cover held on 



274 CAMPING OUT 

by the handle, which folds over it and hooks its end 
over the far rim. Aluminum makes a fine baking 
utensil because it has three times the conductivity 
of steel and so distributes any extra heat all over 
its surface instead of permitting it to localise and 
scorch, as steel will always do, no matter how 
carefully handled. I always have combread for 
breakfast, as it is so easily made and sticks to 
your ribs far longer than biscuits or pancakes. 
Into the mixing pan, a cup of flour, %-cup of corn 
meal, a heaping tablespoonful of baking powder, 
ditto of sugar, a half teaspoonful of salt, and stir 
all together. Break in an egg (throwing shell into 
coffee pail, which is simmering on the stove) and 
add milky water from a cup, stirring thoroughly 
until you have a thick batter, which will just pour 
with the help of a spoon. Meanwhile, the Kid 
has been heating up a heaping tablespoonful of 
butter in the baker, smearing it all over the walls 
and lid of the baker with a dried leaf, and now he 
pours the remaining melted butter into my batter 
while I stir it around. Next the whole batter is 
poured into the pan, filling it a little over half 
full, the cover is put on, handle snapped down, 
coffee taken off stove and set to simmer on the 
rock alongside, lid comes off rear hole and baker 
is set in the hole. Inside is a glowing mass of live 




TENT STOVE AND REFLECTOR BAKER 




THE author's tent STOVE IN MOUTH OF BLIZZARD TENT 



MAINLY ABOUT TENT STOVES 275 

coals. A few minutes later a peek under the lid 
shows that the cake has risen until it just touches 
the lid, when it is capsized in the hole and its top 
face baked. About five minutes later a wisp of 
smoke curling from the baker tells us that the 
cake is browned on that face, when it is again cap- 
sized and baked on the other side until the same 
wisp tells us she is done. Then t^ie baker is taken 
off and propped up flat against the side of the 
stove, with a rock to hold it there, and its place 
is now taken by the fry-pan, with grouse or rab- 
bit chunks in it, a deep aluminum plate over it, and 
a cupful of water in the pan. 

All this time the cook has not neglected to feed 
in regularly billets of dry wood to keep the stove 
going, for live coals have a great way of burning 
out and do not last like anthracite ; also to give his 
cereal pot a stir now and then. When the game 
is nearly done he takes off the cereal pot and 
serves, putting it back on again filled with spring 
water for washing up, and we fall to. ' ' Cow ' ' and 
sugar are passed, until the sighs of feeding hunts- 
men, filling empty bellies overnight, fill the tent. 
Now the game is speared out of the fry-pan and a 
rich dope is made of the left-over gravy with flour 
stirred into it, while the baker is rescued from 
behind its rock and out of it comes a fat com cake 



276 CAMPING OUT 

that quarters to four big hunks of rich cornbread. 
Coffee is poured out of the pail, two cups to each 
man, a rasher of eggs and wonderful bacon rustled 
in the fry-pan while you eat — a man can hunt his 
head off on that grub! 

Then pipes, wash up dishes, put all raw food in 
pots or hung up where small prowlers cannot 
touch it, and we are off for the day's hunt. A 
steep climb up a half a thousand feet brings us 
to the ridges, and presently we are at a lumber 
slashing where the grouse love to hunt beetles 
and to dust in the open. We advance abreast, 
with guns at a ready — oh, for a good bird dog! 
(but that would be one more mouth to feed, some 
day we will try making him pack in his own food). 
Suddenly— ''Whirrr!'' *'Mark!" shouts the Kid, 
his gun barks, and through the coppice I glimpse a 
couple of grey shapes with flashing wings. 

We mark them down and walk ahead. A hun- 
dred yards, one-fifty ; where are they, anyhow ! All 
of another sudden — well, you know the rest! — ^he 
got up right over there to the left and perhaps 
you poled him over with a snap, or perhaps you 
never touched a feather. Or, most likely, far be- 
hind you a muffled roar told you that Mr. Pat had 
let you walk right over him and then made good 
his getaway when you had gone ahead, clear out 



MAINLY ABOUT TENT STOVES 27T 

of sight ! It's the royalest sport of all bird shoot- 
ing, and being without a dog makes it doubly diflS- 
cult, for you get no warning whatever. We had a 
week of it in those mountains, and considered two 
grouse a day, with maybe a bunny or two thrown 
in for good measure, a good bag. It takes a snap 
shot to get those fellows with any regularity, and 
so the Kid and I have planned a course of snap 
shooting with the hand trap this winter — ^but 
that 's another story. * ' Pat 's ' ' harder than quail ? 
— gee whizz, yes ! 

Sunday we spent fixing up camp. There is not 
a level spot a yard square anywhere in that coun- 
try, so our tent was pitched on a considerable 
slope. I got no sleep the first night, in spite of 
the comfortable bed of leaves, for we were always 
sliding down hill out of the tent and ramming 
the stove, so Sunday we fixed up a rig that may in- 
terest you. First, we cut a 10-inch log long 
enough to go clear across the tent, staked it in 
place, cut a lot of poles about l^/^ inches in diam- 
eter and laid them level, six inches apart with their 
upper ends dug in the ground and the lower ends 
resting on our cross log. On these went a brush 
pile of small, springy twigs, maybe six inches 
thick, and on this the tarp, with a thick bed of 
leaves atop of them. Then the sleeping bags, 



278 CAMPING OUT 

laced together so we could back up against each 
other on cold nights, and we had a comfortable, 
level bed in a slopy country. To get head room 
enough with our wedge tent and this high bed, we 
simply spread out the roof with two withes about 
three feet long, bent over the ridge rope under 
the rear and front gore seam. This made a hip 
roof to the tent and gave us a lot more room. 

Our Montana stove was non-collapsible sheet 
iron, with an oven in it, which is a tremendous 
convenience — a real necessity, when you have four 
hunters to feed. We also used the reflector baker 
which I brought along in my outfit, and it baked 
very well, put up against one side of the stove, 
said side usually being red hot. The two together 
managed to keep us fed on time, or sometimes 
spruce grouse would be baking in the oven while 
biscuits or cornbread would be cooking in the alu- 
minum baker. None of the Eastern outfitters list 
a stove with oven inside, but there are plenty of 
plain box ones, one, two, and three-hole, about 10 
by 12 in. by 18 to 36 in. long, and they all are fur- 
nished either folding or non-collapsible. The for- 
mer style is preferable, as, even though the box 
stove makes a kind of trunk to hold all the kitchen- 
ware and part of your grub, it is rather an un- 
wieldy shape, except on a canoe trip, where it 



MAINLY ABOUT TENT STOVES 279 

would make a fine centre parcel and you would ob- 
viate the necessity of setting it up each time and 
maybe losing one of the small bolts. Our West- 
ern stove, because of its oven, would pack nothing 
but what could be stowed in the oven, and it re- 
quired rather short billets of wood, but, as it rode 
on top of a pack load, outside the diamond hitch 
in a squaw hitch of its own, it was not at all in- 
convenient. We ran into a better one in a cache 
in the mountains, owned by the uncle of one of our 
party, and therefore borrowable so long as we 
were on that site. Here the oven was almost as 
big as the stove and packed inside the box of the 
stove, but to set up you attached the oven so that 
its draught matched a flat draught hole in the 
rear upper corner of the stove box, and from the 
oven the chimney pipe led out. The hot draught 
from the box stove encircled the oven and passed 
out through the pipe and so you could use long 
man's-sized billets in the box stove, which would 
smoulder all night with the door and bottom well 
chinked. 

For permanent camps with board floors to the 
tents all the outfitting firms make a portable camp 
stove with legs and bottom, the whole outfit, in- 
cluding oven, hot water tank, pans and utensils to 
fit the stove, being packable inside the stove, so 



280 CAMPING OUT 

the whole works can be put in your big camp 
chest. These are a great convenience to the all- 
summer camper. 

None of these tent stoves have any bottom, 
though one with legs attached can be furnished for 
an extra price. A bottom is, to my mind, a nui- 
sance on a roving camp, an extra weight, and very 
hard to keep flat, for the coals are apt to get right 
down through the ashes onto it, heating it red hot 
and buckling it out of flat. Better set up on a 
flat stone, and one not too flat at that, for it is 
easy to chink up irregularities with small pieces 
of stone and ashes, but hard to manage the 
draughts on a perfectly flat stone, for you then 
have only the door to depend on. There are times 
when you could use two doors, to provide air 
enough for complete combustion without over- 
much smoke, and it is then easy to pull out a 
few chink stones, putting them back when the 
wood is well flamed out and down to coals or 
charred to charcoal. All these stoves without bot- 
tom run from 15 to 22 pounds in weight, and are 
worth their taking a whole lot, for a party of four 
or more hunters in cold or snowy weather. Just 
the saving in firewood labour, in smoke, and in the 
fact that the tent can be partly closed around a tent 
stove, making it warm and comfortable even with 



MAINLY ABOUT TENT STOVES 281 

a blizzard blowing outside, is argument enough 
for their use. With an open backlog fire not only 
is the fuel problem serious labour and loss of 
hunting time, but the smoke nuisance is a matter 
of continuous smarting eyes and your raindrops 
or snowflakes are driving into the tent if a strong 
wind is gusting about, as it usually is in cold 
weather. 

The round-end box camp stove is another fav- 
ourite, same dimensions and weight as the square- 
end, but non-collapsible. It is very strong and 
will pack the cook outfit pails side by side, besides 
its stove pipe on top of the pails, so, for a canoe 
or horse-packing trip it is a good choice. Weighs 
from 15 to 21 pounds. 

While any stove less than two-hole is a hard 
thing to get a meal on, for a tent stove that can 
rustle breakfast also, the one-hole cylindrical 12- 
in. diameter by 12 inches high is a good purchase, 
and it costs only three dollars. It can be filled up 
with, wood chunks at night, and the draught 
chinked down, when it will run all night and warm 
a large tent. It is not a very good cooker, as 
the top is so high from the bed of the fire, and 
the hole too small to let any pot down in it to the 
coals. However, there is room on top for a fry- 
pan and a coffee pot at the same time, and, with 



282 CAMPING OUT 

some quick-cooking cereal like two-minute oat- 
meal, you can get breakfast all right on it, and 
stew a mulligan at night while you broil game 
meat on another fire outside. The weight of this 
stove is 11 pounds. 

I originally intended to make my Forester stove 
of this shape, of a light cylinder of 22-gauge sheet 
steel, to just hold the two pots of the cook kit end 
to end in it, but I could not plan any way around 
that one-hole difficulty, until I came to realise that 
the same metal, wrapped around the pots when 
side by side, would give you a two-hole stove that 
would weigh about the same as the cylinder. The 
rest was easy. Door at one end; pipe outlet at 
the other, down at the bottom of the stove, so that 
a pot in the forward hole would not block the 
draught. Then a stout bridge between the two 
holes, two lengths of 2-inch stove pipe, 14 inches 
long, so as to pack in the stove, and you had it. 
So made, in sheet steel, it weighed 2i/4 pounds, all 
told. I originally intended to use the aluminum 
pot covers for stove lids, but they stick abominably 
in the holes, owing to the great expansion of alu- 
minum when hot, and you want the covers on the 
pots most of the time, so I added two stove lids, 
bringing the weight up to 2% pounds and so had 
a fine hiking stove. Originally the pipe telescoped, 



MAINLY ABOUT TENT STOVES 283 

but it stuck and rusted and got caked with soot and 
sand which I had no time to clean out, and now I 
use the two pipes with a tight draw at one end 
so that they go together like an ordinary stove 
pipe. It will run several hours, after a final fill- 
ing at night with oak or hardwood billets about 
IY2 inches in diameter, or a big billet can be cut 
and split in half and got over the coals by lifting 
up the stove, putting it on the coals and letting 
the stove come down over it. Here it will burn 
for a long time, but do not try it without enough 
coals to keep up your draught or the smoke will 
come out the lids instead of going up the chim- 
ney. 

In a country where half the stove wood is sparky 
hemlock and spruce, a spark arrester is a neces- 
sity, for all paraffined tent fabrics will take a 
spark and make quite a hole of a small hot coal. 
The arrester is a nuisance, as it is continually 
filling up with soot and ash, but it is necessary, 
particularly if the stove is inside the tent and its 
pipe passes up through the roof. As the tent 
flaps must be left open in any tent to guard against 
asphyxiating gases from the stove, we have al- 
ways put our stove out just in front of the tent, 
with the front flaps guyed out to enclose it with 
just entrance room for a man to get inside around 



284 CAMPING OUT 

the stove. Our chimney top is thus out of harm's 
way, for any sort of cross wind will carry any 
sparks away from the tent, a wind directly into the 
tent being the only one which would blow sparks 
on it, in which case we would most probably turn 
the tent around. Usually we have been lucky in 
our wind judgment and wind shifts, so that only 
once in the last four years have we had to turn 
the tent around, which was not much of a matter 
anyway. 

The convenience of campfire grates is well 
known to every man who hits the trail often, but 
a new thing in camp grates, half a stove, has 
lately come on the market, and ought to have men- 
tion in this chapter. You all know the effect of 
a strong cross wind on an open campfire, how it 
sweeps the heat from under your pots, so that they 
are twice as long coming to a boil, and how you 
always built a stone or earth windbreak to remedy 
this trouble as much as possible. In this new 
grate, three sides are of folding sheet steel, with 
hooks inside on which your grate is hung. You 
thus have instantly, legs for your grate and a 
wind break on three sides of your fire, leaving the 
open side free to feed the fire and set the reflector 
baker up against. Any experienced camper can 
see at once what a vast improvement over the 



MAINLY ABOUT TENT STOVES 285 

ordinary open campfire this form of grate is, and, 
for a large party of six or eight people, on a 
canoe trip or almost any form of transportation, 
it is one of the best devices of the kind. It is 
made in one size, 18xl0-in. grate, folds 19x10x1 
inch, and weighs 5% pounds. 

Finally, and most importantly, the whole sub- 
ject of camp stoves hangs on the use of ten-cent 
cooking gloves. With them you can do almost 
any stunt about a cook stove with impunity ; with- 
out them you will be burning your fingers half the 
time. Be sure to take along a pair, and don't 
lose them. Flipping the pan baker, turning 
around the baking pan in the reflector baker, pick- 
ing up the latter, lifting off and on stove lids, 
handling hot pots, adjusting fire brands and live 
coals — all these things you can do with impunity 
with a pair of cooking gloves on. The last pair, 
my oldest boy bought for me just before we set 
off. Kemembering the unspeakable sooty white 
ones, used some time ago, and the brown ones of 
the last two years, which have always been too 
palpably dirty after the first day in camp, he used 
the discretion of his years this time, and bought — 
black. Now, I'd probably have never thought of 
that! 



CHAPTEK XIV 



AUTOMOBILE CAMPING 



The fact that any well-built car can penetrate 
into all good game country, outside of the big 
game localities reached only by canoe or moun- 
tain and forest trail, has led to a continuous de- 
velopment of its use as transportation to good 
hunting and fishing grounds. As many of the 
best of the latter are located where there is no 
inn, and so far away that a return home leaves 
but little time for sport, some sort of camping 
adjunct to the automobile has been very desirable. 
It was soon realised that the car itself made an 
excellent framework to secure at least one wall 
of the tent to, and so especial designs were made 
to fit an automobile frame, with a jointed pole 
carried in the car along with the other duffle, and 
this tent, called the automobile tent, was put on 
the market, in sizes from 8%x7i^-foot area, with 
8-foot centre pole and 4i/^-foot rear wall, weigh- 
ing 21 pounds, to 101/4x8%, same pole and rear 
wall height, weight 26i/^ pounds. In design this 

286 



AUTOMOBILE CAMPING 287 

tent is virtually the so-called ''Snow tent." Its 
rear wall is secured at three points to the auto- 
mobile frame and the side walls slope down to 
pegs in the front in long triangles. The front 
was nearly an equilateral triangle, 8% feet on a 
side, and the top a short ridge extending back- 
wards some 30 inches, after which it sloped down 
to the rear wall. Such a tent reflected fire heat 
well, gave plenty of room to stand up in dressing 
in the front part of the tent, and slept four men 
on the floor or three with folding camp cots. 

It became at once very popular with automobil- 
ists, and is still so. As the car cannot get far 
in from a road, and good level tent sites, near 
spring water and yet near an accessible lumber 
road, are hard to find, the automobile camping idea 
developed still further in the automobile trailer, 
in which the entire camp, — tent, cots, kitchen and 
ice box, — is carried on a two-wheeled trailer so 
as to be immediately available as a comfortable 
forest home. One of the troubles of camping with 
an automobile is that the party is limited below 
the seating capacity of the car because there is no 
room for all the duffle. I suppose I have been on 
two dozen automobile camping trips where we had 
to pack in any old way, perched on our duffle, with 
part of it lashed on behind, some of it on the run- 



288 CAMPING OUT 

ning boards and some tucked in on each side of the 
radiator — but still the back tonneau was crowded 
with duffle bags, and a car that could have taken 
six was limited to four. And, when you add in a 
couple of husky setters and pointers, none on par- 
ticularly good terms with each other, — good night ! 
My first experience with trailers was a little one 
to carry our boat that we got up out of a pair 
of wheels, a tongue, and a spring from some de- 
funct farm wagon. In the Croton reservoirs the 
bass are temperamental ; will bite savagely in one 
lake and refuse to feed at all in the next, and there 
is no known law by which they regulate this cus- 
tom, so that the only way to be sure of a day's 
sport is to keep going until you strike a lake where 
they are biting. Our boat, like all others, had a 
Water Department registry number on it, so it 
could be used in any lake, and we lashed it upside 
down on the wagon wheels with the tongue lashed 
on top of the tool box behind the little Ford, and 
away we would go across country, making about 
22 miles without distressing the trailer. Arrived 
at a lake, overboard would go the boat (she car- 
ries three and two could carry her) and we would 
be plugging or giving 'em frogs or crawfish or 
helgramites, — any and everything — until con- 
vinced that their majesties were feeling indisposed 



AUTOMOBILE CAMPING 289 

that particular day. Then, on again, with the boat 
on the trailer, to the next lake, until we hit it just 
right. 

The trailer has been developed from such sim- 
ple ideas to a complete house, with four cots, two 
on a side, or double tiered, a galley and ice box 
and a tent pulled over all, and the whole works 
can be unlimbered in some fifteen minutes and 
limbered up in about the same time. At first the 
builders did not realise that everything about 
such an outfit will shake loose on the road unless 
every bolt and nut is secured by cotter-pin, or else 
upset, and the troubles from falling apart due to 
road vibration were so aggravating as to cause 
many dealers to abandon the trailer altogether as 
a nuisance. But as now made, with stout artillery 
wheels, and all jointed parts secured by cotter ed 
nuts, you will find your trailer in good working 
order when you come to unlimber at night, with 
no important bolts and pins missing at the roll 
call. It is the same problem that the artillery in 
the Army had to face — even the cotter-pins them- 
selves had to be secured with a bit of chain so that 
they, too, could not get lost during the wear and 
tear of the campaign. 

As the trailer industry is a new one and has 
grown to considerable dimensions, we will have a 



290 CAMPING OUT 

look at some of the leading designs. Our illustra- 
tion shows one that appears to be the last word 
in comfort and substantial construction; the top 
is of wood slats and rubber-coated fabric, similar 
to the well-known wagon top, and this is raised by- 
hinged and locked uprights so that all you have to 
do is to poke it up, one end at a time, with a stick, 
when the top assumes its place some seven feet 
above the floor of the trailer. Next, the outrigger 
tent rails are swung out and the side walls of the 
tent pulled out over them, and then the beds are 
swung out horizontally in their frames and their 
outboard feet let down to the ground and the tent 
walls secured over them. And these beds are of 
woven wire springs, with a regular mattress such 
as you would have at home. They are double, 42 
inches wide, sleeping two each. A folding table 
is set up on the trailer floor with the beds as seats, 
and the ice box is pulled out sideways from under 
the trailer, always accessible, the denatured alco- 
hol stove lit up, and soon you have a feed ready 
to serve in the trailer. Even in bad weather, with 
all the flaps pulled down front and rear, you still 
have plenty of light, for the tent roof has a cellu- 
loid skylight of large size on both sides. This 
trailer weighs about 600 pounds packed, and has 



AUTOMOBILE CAMPING 291 

artillery wheels and solid box construction when 
packed for the road. 

Another way of getting at the same thing is ex- 
emplified in a design which is not a trailer, but a 
compact camp home to be carried on the running 
board. When packed, this is a stout lacquered 
box, 11x18x48 inches. Inside it are a full sized 
double-decked bed, with two wire springs, two 
mattresses for the beds, two camp stools, and a 
wall tent, 7x8x7 feet to the ridge, while the box 
itself is a table 3x4 feet when opened out flat and 
its interior legs let down and locked. When un- 
packed this outfit sets up to give you a wall tent 
and a double-decked bed for four, the frame of 
the latter being also the frame of the tent. It 
weighs altogether about 160 pounds, and leaves 
you plenty of room in the car for personal duffle 
bags and food bags, cook kit and the like. 

Getting back to the trailers, another good de- 
sign shows what can be done with the wall tent in 
combination with the trailer. In a word, it gives 
you a very simple and easily erected outfit which 
can be set in less than ten minutes with a mini- 
mum of jointed poles. The central frame is set 
up in sockets in the trailer body, and the two beds, 
both double width, when opened outboard and 
their outer legs let down to ground, carry with 



292 CAMPING OUT 

them the two spreader frames over which the 
eaves of the wall tent fit. It is then a simple mat- 
ter to spread the tent over the frame and peg 
down, and your nomadic home is ready for serv- 
ice. A folding table is carried to set up inside on 
the trailer floor, and under the trailer bottom is a 
double tin-lined ice box and provision box, the 
former 10x14x28 inches, and the latter 12x15x28 
inches. The weight of this outfit is 650 pounds, 
and the trailer is substantially built, with artil- 
lery wheels, a body of tough quality woods, enam- 
elled and ironed, which can be used as a commer- 
cial trailer wagon when not out on a camping trip. 
The draw-bar mechanism of all trailers has, of 
course, received considerable study by the engi- 
neering force of the manufacturers. The original 
lashing scheme used in makeshift converted farm 
wagon parts has been replaced by universal ball 
and socket joint devices, with springs to absorb 
shock, and a special fitting for attaching to the 
body of your car. This draw bar must exert its 
pull at all angles, both horizontal and vertical, and 
must both give on sudden starts or jounces in go- 
ing over ''thank-you-marms" in the road and take 
up by spring action when the car is suddenly 
braked or stopped, when the momentum of the 
trailer will take it ahead. The speed at which 



AUTOMOBILE CAMPING 293 

most trailers are guaranteed is 40 to 50 miles an 
hour, so that in all the best makes the draw bar is 
of best quality steel, with ball and socket or uni- 
versal joint. 

It is not surprising that the advantages of a 
gambrel roof in giving more headroom above the 
berth should have been seized on by the designers 
of automobile trailers. Another trailer design uses 
such a roof, gotten by the addition of an extra 
pair of frames on each side. The central frame is 
as before, but in addition to the spreaders run- 
ning out diagonally to points a short distance 
above the outer edge of the beds when set out> 
there is a second pair of spreaders, running up to 
take the angle of the gambrel, thus giving more 
headroom inside the tent. Otherwise this trailer 
follows the general design of the best construc- 
tions, with wire spring beds, stout artillery wheels, 
and solid wood box heavily ironed. The lower 
uprights of the frame are, however, steel angle 
irons rigidly rivetted to the box, giving greater 
strength and less liability to breakage and coming 
apart of lighter-jointed constructions. The tent is 
folded down between the four uprights and there 
is still room for a boat or canoe to be carried, 
lashed securely in between the four steel uprights. 

If you so design the trailer that the beds simply 



294 CAMPING OUT 

tip up inside the box on sliding hinges, you will 
have not only a quick and simple way of handling 
the beds, but considerable space inside available 
for all sorts of camp duffle packed in the space 
between the beds. Furthermore, the feature of 
standing lower uprights, about the height of the 
beds when tipped up on edge, can be retained, and 
the tent body is then pulled down, with its roof 
frame top down to the top of the uprights and 
you have a somewhat higher trailer astern than 
the more collapsible models, yet one easier gotten 
up and having more packing space inside, and 
these ideas are embodied in still another trailer. 
In general, the construction is similar to the 
best standards, with solid wooden body avail- 
able for commercial work, and a strong steel 
ball joint coupler to the car. To open out, the 
top frame is simply shoved up to full height 
and pinned, the spreader frames stretched out, 
and the tent expanded over them and the beds 
tipped over outwards and their legs let down to 
ground, when you have a camp home for four im- 
mediately available. A rear window of celluloid 
panes lets in light at the back wall of the tent, and 
the folding table is set up inside, food prepared 
from the box and galley in boxes at the rear end 
of the trailer are gotten into commission and you 



AUTOMOBILE CAMPING 295 

have your camp. When in the course of a trip if 
one strikes a bit of stream or a good hunting up- 
land contiguous to the road, one of the things one 
does not want to do is to pass it up and go farther, 
to possibly fare worse, and finally end up in some 
roadhouse emphatically of the kind where com- 
forts are rural and the grub old stuff brought up 
from the city a year before. Here is where the 
trailer shines. Like the hunter with his pack on 
his back, your home is right with you; camp is 
where you are, and you do not have to pass on 
with a sigh or get up at unheard-of hours to make 
a trip before dawn in the car to be on your grounds 
by daylight. 

With the idea of having the largest possible 
space overhead, a final trailer design shows the 
central top canopy considerably wider than the 
body of the trailer, thus giving a steeper slant to 
the wings, and making wider spring beds avail- 
able. This trailer has fi^xed lower tent supports 
and the upper ones which take the roof lean out- 
ward from these fixed supports, carrying a fold- 
ing frame roof from which the side wings come 
down. These wings are of double construction, 
the outer being a fly which can be guyed out for 
shade and comfort, and the inner a large window 
of celluloid panes. This gives a roomy house of 



296 CAMPING OUT 

the space inside the trailer, in which are a two- 
compartment ice box, a two-burner stove and a 
collapsible table. In all other respects the trailer 
follows the best practice, of heavy, sturdy artil- 
lery wheels and steel universal joint coupler. The 
trailer is somewhat larger than some of the others, 
being 7^ feet long by 44-ineh box, and it will 
carry a boat in addition to its regular load. 

By no means has the original automobile tent 
been lost sight of during the development of the 
trailer idea. A good many autoists do not want a 
trailer astern, preferring to make camp with a 
tent every night, and this has been met with sev- 
eral designs, besides the original tent described at 
the beginning of this article. One of these is 
shown with the tent facing the car and the front 
flap led over the top of the car roof. Windows 
are provided for ventilation and the larger sizes 
with an interior partition. The sizes in which this 
tent is made are 7x5, 7x7 and 7x10; 8, 12 and 16 
pounds respectively. All are provided with floor 
cloths sewed in as part of the tent, and all but the 
smallest have a solid front on the car side, with 
entrances on each side. 

Another design provides two lean-to tents, one 
on each side of the car, utilising the interior of the 
car itself as part of the storage room, while still 



AUTOMOBILE CAMPING 297 

another -utilises the mnning board of the car as 
the front end of a double cot bed with the tent 
attached to the under edge of the car top coming 
out in a lean-to over the cot. What was needed 
was some sort of flexible spring mesh that would 
go in a collapsible pressed steel frame on which a 
mattress can be laid, for, in a bed of this width, a 
canvas bottom would simply bag in the middle. 
This bed is 48x78 inches, and weighs 60 pounds 
with, mattress, and the shelter top is of 12-ounce 
duck canvas. A frame coming out from the rear 
and of the bed holds the rear corners of the tent 
strong and secure, while the entrance is from the 
tonneau, which is also the best possible place for 
a dressing room. The whole thing packs into a 
long box-like package, 51 inches long, which is 
bolted to the running board and can be opened 
out in a very short time, or removed entirely from 
the running board when your car is not on cruise. 
Developing the trailer idea into the field of the 
permanent camp with board floor, a trailer has 
been designed in which the floor folds up to make 
the body of the trailer, while the tent, which is 
really a folding canvas house, 10 feet 2 inches by 
7 feet 6 inches, with high perpendicular sides, 
folds up to make the cover of the trailer. This 
leaves room inside to pack the wire spring cots, 



298 CAMPING OUT 

icebox, two-burner gasoline stove, camp furniture, 
etc. Opening the trailer out gives you a wide, flat 
board floor, with the cots at each side, each double 
and so accommodating four in the party, and the 
stove, icebox and table are set up at the rear end 
of the house. The tent is of 10-ounce duck, water- 
proofed, with fly over the top for coolness, and 
the frame is of wood struts, ridge and uprights. 
This tent-house has four celluloid windows, two 
at each end, and when set up reminds one very 
much of the popular tent-houses for all-summer 
camping. 

Another idea in touring-car tents consists in 
having a tent large enough to close the entire car, 
using the car top as the tent roof support and 
pegging out the slant of the roof on each side of 
the car to make a double tent extending out about 
7 feet each side of the car. This is made to fit the 
11-foot Ford touring car as the smallest size, and 
from that up to go over a 16-foot car. The tent 
to fit the Ford weighs 25 pounds and folds to a 
bundle 12 inches in diameter by 24 inches long. 
The walls of this tent are 2i/4 to 3 feet high, which, 
with the rise of the roof to the top of the car, gives 
plenty of headroom, and the double tent permits 
the eating-table on one side of the car and sleep- 
ing quarters on the other. 



AUTOMOBILE CAMPING 299 

Finally, we have a bed which is swung from the 
roof of the auto itself. It is not a hammock, but 
a substantial frame with iron rods and canvas bot- 
tom and connecting cloths reaching to hooks in 
front and rear edges of the frame of your car top. 
The weight is about 12 pounds, and it will sleep 
two. 

As much of our best hunting and fishing is now- 
adays reached by car, in places inaccessible from 
the railroad and only to be otherwise reached by 
back packing or taking a chance on getting a coun- 
try rig to get you on the spot, and, since the car 
gives every hunter and fisherman a wide radius 
of sport within car distance of his home, the 
trailer or tent solves the problem of how to get 
there and stay there to get your fill of the sport 
instead of having to drive back home through the 
night. 



CHAPTER XV 



WINTER CAMPING 



My first *' white" camp lasted more than a 
month. As the transcontinental train rolled 
across the prairies, the vast Rockies loomed up, 
covered with snow. From the rocky slopes, where 
no snow could stick, down their flanks and out on 
the prairie foothills, all was a mantle of pure 
white. I looked at them in some apprehension; 
were we to spend more than a month there camp- 
ing, travelling and hunting under such conditions? 
And, if so, would my time-tried camping outfit 
prove adequate? Then I recalled another winter 
camp, in the South, where there was no snow, but 
where the night temperatures went down to two 
above zero and generally hovered around twenty, 
or ten below freezing; also other cold weather 
camps in the early spring and fall, when the ice 
formed in the pails every night, and I realised 
that snow conditions were really warmer than 
these, and that any outfit that was adequate then 
would be adequate now. 

300 



WINTER CAMPING 301 

In point of fact your body is the real heat cen- 
tre — a sort of stove. It gives out quantities of 
heat, and if this is conserved by proper clothing 
and bedding you are comfortable, no matter what 
the weather may be doing. This is the whole 
secret of the matter, and, once mastered, winter 
camping proves the most enjoyable of all out- 
door recreations, for those pests of all summer 
outings, the insects, are refreshingly conspicuous 
by their absence. However, I can conceive that 
an outing in the dead of winter, with inadequate 
clothing and bedding, would prove anything but 
pleasurable, and even dangerous. I know of one 
rash scoutmaster who took out a whole troop of 
boys with the usual scratch outfit, good enough 
for summer hikes, and supplemented by a few 
extra blankets. They stuck it out one night ; came 
back home next day rather worn out, with most 
of the boys having colds, and one narrowly miss- 
ing pneumonia. 

But let me hasten to show the woodsman's side 
of the picture, so that you can see how different 
the affair becomes with a real outfit. That snow 
on the Rockies turned out to be a mere drift, only 
two inches deep, and within two days it had nearly 
disappeared. The cold at night was always below 
freezing, but our wool and Mackinaw sleeping 



302 CAMPING OUT 

bags and regular winter outing clothes proved as 
adequate there as in our various camps in the 
East. We made 150 miles on horseback during 
the next six days, and finally pushed on over the 
Continental divide down into the Pacific side of 
the ranges. Here the very atmosphere spelled 
snow, and that night over a foot fell. We woke 
up to see the world buried in deep snowy white, 
the spruces laden thick with their white burden, 
and the big flakes coming on down swift and fast. 
The big ''rag house/' our 10x15 ft. wall tent, was 
buried heavily with snow, and my Forester tent 
almost out of sight, with high banks of whiteness 
driven up on its sides. We spent that day in mak- 
ing everything strong and secure, for it is the 
weight of snow that drags up tent pegs, and 
buckles in the eaves and ridge. Four whole trees 
were used up on the wall tent, each of them a 
four-inch dead lodgepole pine; one forming the 
ridge, two the eave poles and the last the posts 
for the latter. The ground was not yet so deeply 
frozen but that a few cuts of the axe would get 
through the frost, letting these posts be driven 
in deep into the duff. One end of the ridge pole 
was lashed to a tree that in a measure sheltered 
the tent from snow fall, and the outer end was 
supported by stout shears cut from the tops of the 



WINTER CAMPING 303 

four trees, which tops also furnished the supply 
of tent pegs. The eaves were guyed out and 
lashed to the side poles, making the roof strong 
and flat. For two weeks the rag house sheltered 
us, while for the same time the snow came down 
endlessly, with but two sunshiny days of inter- 
mission, and by that time the snow was three feet 
deep. The forester tent we let bury herself, sim- 
ply clearing out a hollow in front large enough 
to hold the backlog fire. The snow soon formed 
a sort of self-supporting arch over the small roof 
of this tent, and this arch was lined inside with 
a skin of ice so that in time practically no weight 
of snow came on the canvas roof. With the big 
tent the roof problem was simple, one just slapped 
the snow oif it from inside as it accumulated, 
a vigorous blow on the canvas from inside the 
tent sending the snow flying. If it had turned 
bitter cold we should have laid poles up from the 
side pole to the ridge and shingled them with 
balsam browse, but this is hardly worth the time 
necessary to do it if the temperatures are around 
twenty above zero. One begrudges this time taken 
from the business of the trip, which is hunting, 
and unless necessary to keep the tent walls from 
radiating too much heat, I should advise against 
it. 



304 CAMPING OUT 

After the first three days of snowfall the ani- 
mals began to move around and the forest be- 
came full of tracks. In due time three elk, a 
grizzly bear and a mountain sheep came to grace 
our game pole, and, as we were not of the brand 
of hunters who kill merely for the trophy, leav- 
ing the fine carcass of good meat to rot in the 
forest, our camp activities were in a great meas- 
ure spent in jerking all our abundance of meat, 
fleshing hides, boiling out heads and getting our 
trophies ready for the taxidermist. We we're 
four hunters ; no guides ; each man depending on 
his own skill and self-reliance ; and each day, with 
belt axe outside in the Mackinaw belt, and emer- 
gency ration in pocket we would fare forth into 
the silent whiteness, to cover some fifteen miles of 
mountains and valleys, alone, unguided save by 
our stout hearts and true compasses, to return at 
night weary but with a healthy appetite that could 
consume four times the average meal of civilisa- 
tion. A jerky frame of spruce bou^s, hung with 
strips of meat, was established near the camp, 
and a fire kept going under it by whoever hap- 
pened to remain in camp, and, slowly, more than 
a thousand pounds of good meat was reduced to 
dry strips as hard as hickory, the whole not weigh- 
ing over three hundred pounds. 



WINTER CAMPING 305 

For some time I slept alone in the forester, but, 
as an open tent in winter needs a backlog fire and 
this fire uses up an unconscionable quantity of 
timber, I gave it up and moved into the rag house, 
where we had that winter blessing, a tent stove, 
and the forester was used forthwith for a store 
room for grub and duffle. In the rag house a 
certain regime of order and neatness was insti- 
tuted and lived up to. For four men to live in a 
space ten feet by fifteen and still have room for 
a tent stove, requires that during the day the bed- 
ding shall be neatly rolled and stowed in the back 
of the tent, leaving all the floor space for cooking 
and eating operations, also drying wet clothes at 
night. "A man '11 as soon wade through hell on 
wax legs as go through packing snow without get- 
ting wet" is an old mountain saying, and I have 
never yet come across any fabric that will stand 
the constant pounding of caked snow against one 's 
legs, nor any boot, however well greased, that will 
not finally become porous to snow and soak one 
through to the skin before nightfall during the 
day's tramp. The inevitable is usually warded off 
by boot grease until about four o'clock in the 
afternoon, when the wetness makes itself felt, and 
by nightfall, on returning to the tent, the first 
thing done is a change to dry clothes out of the 



306 CAMPING OUT 

kit bag, and an immediate drying of the freezing, 
soaking socks, drawers and trousers, worn dur- 
ing the day, needed again on the morrow. To 
this end not only is a clothes line run along the 
ridge under the pole, but a close-up drying rack 
is arranged around three sides of the stove, under 
the immediate eye of the cook, who transfers 
nearly-dry garments to the clothes line as fast 
as the fire has done the major part of the drying. 
As an auxiliary to this, a sock-drying fire is gen- 
erally maintained outside the tent, in a cleared 
space in the snow, generally the same space re- 
served to the chopping block during the day. Dry- 
ing socks is a fine art, and the punishment for 
carelessness or slovenliness is the loss of the sock, 
an irreparable loss when your nearest trading 
store is fifty miles away, over the Continental 
Divide and not to be reached until the trip 's end ! 
Some one must be on guard, all the time, when an 
open fire and a circle of socks are in proximity, 
and that some one must have his wits about him 
and be continually on the feel so that no sock be 
scorched. 

Meanwhile the supper is being prepared on the 
stove. A huge six-quart mulligan of elk steaks, 
grouse breasts, onions, potatoes, macaroni, rice 
and tomatoes is bubbling back on the stove; a 




IN CAMP IN THE ROCKIES — ^THE 12 X IS-FOOT WALL TENT 



K 



4 



h 



K ',■ 




THE FORESTER TENT IN HEAVY SNOW 



WINTER CAMPING 307 

batch of com bread is rising in the oven; a pot 
of tea simmering; a mess of prunes, apricots, 
peaches and apples is stewing, and soon these 
delicacies are served on a tarp, spread out on the 
tent floor, and each man's place set with plate, 
cup and eating utensils ; sugar, evaporated cream 
and butter gracing the centre of the table. The 
above is a meal for four hungry hunters ! 

Pipes, talk, and dish-cleaning occupy the re- 
maining hours, and then, about nine o'clock, the 
beds are rolled out on the floor space. Mine is a 
caribou skin fur bag, warranted warm in a snow 
bank ; my neighbour swears by a mess of blankets ; 
the cow baron retires into a huge wool and canvas 
cowboy's bed-roll; and the Indian rolls himself 
in a couple of Navajo blankets and is content. I 
prefer the farthest comer of the tent, next the 
rear wall, and often have I raised the sod cloth a 
mite, to a hole that I know of through the snow- 
bank, down which a column of cold forest air will 
come flowing into my nostrils. 

The art of going to bed in a winter camp is one 
devised after some little personal study. While 
many sleep in their clothes, I have found that it 
is warmer to sleep in pyjamas, with one's clothes 
pulled into the bag and wrapped loosely around. 
In a sleeping bag the problem of what to do with 



308 CAMPING OUT 

the unoccupied cold air spaces in the bag has puz- 
zled many an outdoorsman. It goes without say- 
ing that your bag should fit you snugly, with just 
room to turn around in it without binding; too 
large a bag is always cold to sleep in, no matter 
how warm its texture. The blanket man does not 
have this trouble, his blankets fit him snugly and 
can be tucked in tight around the feet; but if he 
is a restless sleeper he soon unrolls them. I have 
found that one's extra clothes fill all waste space 
nicely inside the bag, and, if you find yourself 
getting cold, simply retrieve a few of them and 
pull them over the cold spot. If worn on you 
they will surely be cold, as they restrict blood cir- 
culation and fit so closely that there is no oppor- 
tunity for heat-conserving dead air spaces. 

One's head and feet need particular protection 
in sleeping when the snow is flying outside the 
tent. Without a night toque your head will soon 
be uncomfortably cold and keep you awake, crying 
out for protection, and no brimmed hat will be any- 
thing but an uncomfortable nuisance, always com- 
ing off and waking the sleeper with a cold head. 
Night socks are also essential; your feet are 
farthest from the source of heat, the lungs and 
heart, and the blood does not flow through them in 
such large currents. Wherefore, an extra pair of 



WINTER CAMPING 309 

night socks with a pair of wool night slippers will 
be needed, to keep them warm and comfortable, 
for, if they are cold, you cannot get to sleep. 
Finally comes the question of breathing. If you 
breathe the icy air of midnight directly through 
your nostrils it will surely cool you down, for no 
lungs can stand the constant influx of below-freez- 
ing air without distress. To put one's head en- 
tirely within the bag is what is generally done by 
Alaska mail team men, meat men in the snowy 
mountains, and trappers, but it is a suffocating 
business. I usually compromise by arranging my 
coat over my head, with a channel or hole leading 
out to the outside air. This channel tempers the 
incoming air by the warmth that your body is con- 
tinually giving to the garment, and by morning 
it will become a veritable ice cave, crusted with 
white frost from your breath. But meanwhile 
you will have had a reasonable amount of fresh 
air to breathe all night, without getting chilled. 

You and your sleeping bag thus become a sort 
of heat unit, independent of the tent heat which 
soon fades, your body giving out heat and the 
bag conserving it. When a condition of equi- 
librium is established you dose off to sleep, and 
there is energy enough left to restore tissues and 
rebuild the body for the next day. With inadequate 



310 CAIVIPING OUT 

clothing, no energy is left to replenish the body, 
and you arise worn and tired, all your vitality 
having gone into heat-making. One soon finds 
from his personal equation just how much blanket- 
ing is needed. A good fur bag is the answer for 
robust and feeble alike; with blankets, one man 
may do well with three pair, another require four. 
For quilt sleeping bags, a regulation wool quilt, 
weighing six pounds, will do for most people for 
all winter camping, with a light, all-wool single 
blanket added for very cold weather, around or 
below zero. In any case the outside of the bag 
should be of some windproof material like canvas 
to prevent stealing of heat by conduction. Never 
sleep in a draught; even the best covering loses 
a lot of heat by rapid conduction of a current of 
cold air flowing over the body. And, once the 
equilibrium of heat is established, be careful how 
you get prodigal with it. Going out of the bag 
at night for some fancied want, carelessness with 
the flaps and the like, lose you a certain amount 
of heat, and very rapidly too ; and it takes hours 
of the body's energy to restore it again. Never 
wander around on the damp ground with your 
night socks on; if they get damp or wet they 
will chill your feet and all the heat the body can 
make will scarce suffice to dry them — that takes 



WINTER CAMPING 311 

a real fire! Better change them, or get up and 
dry them before the stove embers, in your bare 
feet, in preference to trying to last out the night 
in damp night socks. 

After two weeks of this snowy life, when it 
seemed eternally Christmas, the elk park "paw- 
ing" got so scant for the horses that their bones 
stuck out gauntly and we decided on a return to 
the rails. Five days' horse travel (one of them 
slush-bound) through the deep snow sufficed to 
do the fifty miles, and it involved four typical 
nomadic winter camps. The first was made as 
night came on, up on a shelf of the mountain 
seven miles up the slopes towards the Continental 
Divide. A spring at that point still spread a 
flow of water under the ice, and the giant spruces, 
heavy-laden with snow, covered the whole site and 
filled the mountain side for miles around. It was 
dark and snowing hard, a veritable blizzard in 
fact, as we unloaded the pack animals. All our 
saddle horses were loaded down with bags of 
jerked meat, so we were all walking on webs, — 
the long, three-bar, Cree snowshoe for powdery 
snow. Each of the four men went at his appointed 
task. One man looked after the horses; another 
got timber for the tent, a third went for the tent 
stove and grub supplies, while I started after 



312 CAMPING OUT 

browse. Three of us first cleared a space ten 
by fifteen feet with our snow shoes, down to the 
hard ice-pan, scraping the last of it off with the 
back of the axe. Then I set out into the darkness 
with belt axe, armed with a carbide lamp. A 
clump of feathery balsams was my object, and a 
few blows with the axe brought down the snow 
from them in showers, which, as they fell on my 
broad-rimmed cowboy Stetson hat, were no bother 
at all. A man in a toque would have had his neck 
filled with snow avalanches, then and there ! The 
balsams were cut down and the boughs cut off 
and hung wheel-wise around a forked stick about 
four feet high, until I had a sort of fat, furry 
caterpillar of browse shoots, each about two feet 
long. It is the best way to carry browse in quan- 
tities. Meanwhile the others had got up the ridge- 
pole and I went around the walls and tied each 
peg rope to a short stick, burying it deep in the 
snow and finally shovelling snow up all around 
the sides with my snowshoe, burying the sod cloth 
and holding it down tight and firm. By the time 
this was done and I was back with a second cater- 
pillar of browse, the tent stove was up and the 
evening meal simmering. Fried elk steak, an 
enormous mulligan of five grouse, shot during the 
day's march; tea, and a double batch of corn- 



WINTER CAMPING 313 

bread was the meal that the cook believed enough 
for us four, and, while it was under way, I spread 
the browse thick on the ice, and topped it with a 
tarp. The bed rolls were dusted of their snow 
and brought inside, and presently all four men 
sat down to a steaming meal. At about the second 
quart of mulligan, two of us gave up, leaving the 
Indian and the cow man still prodding into the 
camp kettle, at which business they remained long 
after we had unrolled our beds and retired to 
pipe-dream and watch our socks drying over the 
stove. The blizzard howled outside, but within 
all was warm and comfortable. A large acetylene 
lamp and a candle lantern supplied plentiful 
illumination, and the talk ran mostly on art and 
literature, with the cowman and the Indian drink- 
ing in hungrily this discussion from a world so 
foreign to their daily lives and therefore so attrac- 
tive to listen to. 

The next day the snow turned to rain and we 
were slush-bound, for it was so soft as to ball 
under the horses' feet. Each sought his favourite 
recreation. The cowman worked at saddle gear; 
the Indian carved a mountain ram's head on the 
stock of his pistol; the cook did a two-days' sup- 
ply of biscuits — about ten batches of them ! — ^while 
I wrote in my notebook and went birding for 



314 CAMPING OUT 

grouse in the afternoon. We were as comfortable 
as any man in his country house, far more so 
than the poor commuter who has to plough out in 
such weather, catching the morning train under 
an inadequate umbrella. Winter camping, for- 
sooth! Why, it was easier to make one's self 
comfortable then than in midsummer ! 

The next day all was sunshiny and clear, and 
the sea of vast mountains round about an incom- 
parable panorama of beauty. This day we got 
the horses over the Continental Divide, where the 
snow was four feet deep in some places and we 
had to take off the webs and tramp a trail for 
them to prevent them floundering, belly deep. By 
noon we were over it, and hiking down the long 
burnt Valley of Desolation, ten miles in the path 
of an old forest fire. We pitched camp in a little 
valley of prairie grass where the horses could get 
at feed by pawing for it, and we men had a brook 
for water. It was a mild night, with the moon 
shining in silver splendour, and camp making was 
a dream of delight and an occasion of the grand- 
est sock-drying bee of the trip. Next morning 
a howling blizzard was raging and the tempera- 
ture had dropped forty degrees. We set forth, 
up the long slopes, along hog's-backs and ridges, 
stopping now and then to shoot prairie chickens 



WINTER CAMPING 315 

or timber grouse which flew like feathered flashes 
of lightning through the scurrying snowflaies. I 
fell far behind, through too much hunting and 
general independence, and so got lost among the 
precipices, and, while nosing around, one of the 
party came back to find me. Four o'clock came, 
and the disappearing sun warned us that camp 
making time was at hand. We chose a site in a 
desolate valley with a tiny brook flowing through 
it, nothing but rocks and sparse vegetation, tum- 
bled about on low hills about the size of the 
AUeghenys. A single clump of spruces looked 
inviting to the party. To a tenderfoot that clump 
would have appeared impossible, and he would 
have attempted to push on. It was filled with a 
dense growth of alders, each an inch thick, with 
nowhere a place to squeeze in the tent. But we 
went at it with our belt axes and soon had the 
alders cleared out, cut off close to the ice pan. 
Then up went the tent and the tent stove, tha 
floor was filled with browse, and the outside alder 
stumps utilised for tent pegs, and soon we were 
cosy and at home. Not over an hour had been 
consumed in turning that howling, blizzard-swept 
valley in the foot-hills of the Eockies into a home- 
land for us, with our house built in the only shel- 
ter available. Under the spruces the snowflakes 



316 CAMPING OUT 

did not come down so thick, and a sock fire was 
started outside the tent. By dark the lanters were 
lit and all hands were partaking of a mountainous 
feed. It was the last day of that winter camp, 
for, next day we rode out on the prairies to the 
east, with never a sign of snow on their vast 
brown stretches. Up there in the mountains they 
were still having a big time, with the snow shoot- 
ing out at us from the mountain passes and an 
occasional flurry chasing us out on the prairie. 
They disappeared into nothingness in the rich 
prairie grass, on which the horses fed like starved 
hounds. A twenty-mile march brought us out to 
the rails, and I slept that night in a civilised bed, 
a Pullman berth, for the first time in more than a 
month. I came out of those mountains a real man, 
full of pep and ginger, intense and imperious in 
my ways, as different from the half-alive human 
worm that I become w^hen a month or so of civili- 
sation has got in its ruinous work, as a pugilist 
is from a bank clerk ! 

For the last seven years I have camped out 
more or less every winter, and the following ideas 
seem to come in the category of things proven 
true and reliable: (1) A closed tout and a tent 
stove are far preferable to an open tent and a 
back log fire, for the latter uses too much wood to 



WINTER CAMPING 317 

be worth the effort and its smoky and acrid atmos- 
phere is always drifting into the tent making it an 
eye-watering sort of living. (2) The cold has 
nothing to do with living in the winter woods; 
you are the stove; see to it that you have warm 
clothing and warm bedding. And this does not 
mean heavy clothing or heavy bedding. In the 
daytime you labour so hard that even a Mackinaw 
is a burden; a good stag shirt is the best wear, 
until nightfall when a sweater coat and perhaps 
a light pocket-sized rubber raincoat will be needed 
to counteract the cold and wind. A fur bag weigh- 
ing ten pounds ; a red Hudson's Bay blanket, four- 
point, some twenty-eight feet long, folded four 
times and enclosed in a gabardine or sheltercloth 
covering; or a quilt bag of wool batts and sateen 
facing, plus a single 6x7 ft. all-wool blanket inside ; 
these three are, any of them, ample winter bed- 
ding, weighing ten pounds — take your choice! 
(3) For winter clothes I have come to prefer 
long wool trousers to breeches; drab wool shirt; 
stag shirt over it; and two pairs of socks under 
cruisers' moccasins or rubber "overs" with 
leather tops, as good winter clothing for daily 
use. Add a Mackinaw in the East, or a wool 
sweater coat in the West with a rubber coat over 
it, or else a khaki coat, fleece-lined with high 



318 CAMPING OUT 

collar, and you have protection handy when you 
get exposed to the cutting wind, or the chill of 
night. You need one change of flannel underwear, 
two more pair of socks and a pair of night socks, 
night felt slippers, a set of pyjamas, and a night 
toque. For a hat the broad rimmed Stetson seems 
best, as snow is continually falling off saplings 
and bushes when you are poking through the 
woods, and a snow shower is a constant occur- 
rence. A bandanna to tie around the whole works 
like a sunbonnet, when the cold is intense enough 
to attack your ears in the woods, is not to be 
sneezed at — ^you may have to put on the night 
toque too! But, as a rule, on the march or on 
the hunting trail, you warm up so much that it 
pays to endure the cold at first, in preference to 
lugging around a Mackinaw or other superfluous 
garment through all the day's hunt. 

(4) As for accessories, tent stoves have been 
treated at greater length in another chapter, and 
in the matter of axes the two-pound Hudson's 
Bay, supplemented by a light, one-man timber 
saw, will do very well for ordinary camping, and 
a full axe if you have horse or toboggan trans- 
portation. For snowshoes you will need bear-paw, 
27''xl4'"s for eastern, wet packing snow; Adiron- 
dack 12"x50'"s for light drifty deep snow; and, 



WINTER CAMPING 319 

for the intense cold, powdery dry snow of the 
Rockies, a still longer shoe, 60"xl3", is generally 
used, often made three-bar. Most people do not 
seem to realise what the hole in a snowshoe is 
for, and so tie the thong so loose that their toe 
is continually getting over on the front bar and 
locking the shoe fast to the sole of the foot. The 
motion of snowshoeing is simply lifting the for- 
ward end, and to do this your toe must go down 
into the hole, as your foot remains parallel to the 
ground as you lift it. So, in tieing the thong, first 
put enough turns around the thong where it goes 
over your toe to insure that it will not permit the 
toe to slide forward, while not at the same time 
binding the toe too fast. The thongs then cross 
your foot and go back around your ankle, where 
they are finally tied in a bow knot in front of the 
ankle. To prevent shovelling up too much snow 
and thus carrying a heavy load, see that the toes 
turn well up. 

(5) If you are going in powdery snow or bear- 
paws, it is well to make yourself as light as pos- 
sible by transferring most of your belongings to 
the toboggan. This is a light sled of alternate oak 
and ash slats, usually 24 inches wide by 7 feet long, 
and will haul easily with 100 lbs. of load wherever 
there is a trail. It is not a success in thick timber 



320 CAMPING OUT 

heavily grown up with underbrush and goes hard 
in powdery snow, but most woods going is along 
woods trails that get somewhere, or, in winter, on 
level stretches of hard snow-covered lake or river 
ice, so that, next to horses, a toboggan is the best 
transportation. In loading it, the stove and camp 
kettle usually go in front, up under the curve, 
and then comes the duffel, well protected by water- 
proof tarps from getting wet by the snow, which 
continually crowds aboard the toboggan. 

(6) As to shelter I would place the large wall 
tent first for a party of hunters, as producing the 
most warmth and comfort on the least expediture 
of time and energy. It can be put up on a nomadic 
camp as quicky as any other of the same size, as 
you will note from my description of our Mon- 
tana trip. For a party of two, the snow tent or 
the All-around tent, described in my chapter on 
Camping Out de Luxe, is a good selection, or, for 
three the Esquimaux tent. Particularly on a back- 
pack hike on snowshoes this is a fine tent, as it' 
provides a living room as well as a sleeping room, 
for, in snowy weather you are indoors a great 
deal more than in summer, and want more room 
to live, move and have your being in comfort. 

I have slept in the Indian teepee in winter, and 
it ought to be the best of all for a permanent 



WINTER CAMPING 321 

camp, but this teepee was managed by white men, 
who succeeded only in filling it with smoke all 
day and draughts of wind all night. The true 
Indian way is with a draught cloth completely 
around inside the teepee in winter, pegged down 
tight to the ground, the draught coming in under 
the skin of the teepee around the base of the poles. 
This provides a current of air to carry off smoke, 
and also makes a double lining to the teepee, 
making it much warmer in winter than the single 
wall of canvas of the white man's tent. Our tee- 
pee had only a summer draught cloth, and the 
wind whistled around its ends and under it, mak- 
ing it as draughty as sleeping in a chimney. The 
weather was only 14 above zero, but I slept cold — 
a dreary piece of mismanagement altogether! I 
have since lived with real Indians who knew bet- 
ter, in fact I could have done better for them my- 
self then, but the owner of the lodge ''knew all 
about it," and so my voice went unheeded. 

If you are an outdoorsman, do not den up all 
winter because of the weather. There is plenty 
to do in the winter woods; ice fishing, trapping, 
shooting foxes and hawks, — ^lots of red-blooded 
sport. Camping out in winter looks like a brave 
thing to do, but really there is nothing to it. Your 
usual fall hunting outfit, plus an extra blanket and 



322 CAMPING OUT 

a good axe, are the principal ingredients for suc- 
cess. The best time to go is the latter part of 
February and the early part of March, when you 
will have warm sunny winter days, with a thaw 
under way and the snow packing well. With no 
insects and snakes, with the woods a wonder of 
sunlit whiteness, it will prove a most enjoyable 
experience ! 



